Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 29, 1997

Parks area was early settling point

by Jim Bradshaw

According to one of them, the first train to pass through the community arrived on Easter Sunday. When the train engineer, who apparently did not speak or understand French, inquired about the name of the settlement, the residents, who spoke as much English as the engineer spoke French, replied, "C'est Paques" ("It's Easter.") The train engineer thought the people had said "Parks," and the name stuck.

Another version is that the engineer (or the conductor, depending upon who's telling the story) was named Parks, and simply decided to name the place for himself. The first Southern Pacific ticket agent at the station was indeed named L.J. Parks, so he could have been the one to give his name to the town.

The area was one of the first to be settled by the Acadians upon their arrival in the Attakapas district in 1765. A number of them moved up the Teche from St. Martinville and founded a settlement at La Pointe de Repos, the resting point. This name also has two versions attached to it. One is that the Acadians gave it the name, because it was here that they would finally rest after their long journey. The other is that early cattlemen in the Attakapas area had already named it that, because they could drive cattle into the cul-de-sac formed here by a sharp bend in the bayou.

A good number of the Acadian settlers of 1765 left La Pointe almost as soon as they settled there, driven away by a raging smallpox epidemic that swept through the area. Many of the La Pointe settlers next established themselves at Cote Gelee, the area between present-day Pilette and Broussard, on the west bank of Bayou Tortue.

Settlement began in the actual village of Parks around 1900. About that time, Paul Melancon purchased a large tract of land to establish a cotton farm. But he decided to divide the property into town lots instead of farming it, and the nucleus of the community was formed.

Some of the early buyers were Louis Roy, John Dugas, Adeloud Barras, Martin Thibodeaux, Emile Melancon, Aymon Sonnier, and Eugene Perioux.

In 1907, the residents of Parks decided that the village should be incorporated, and a committee composed of J.L. Ducrest, P. Almire Babin, and Adlar Barras directed C.S. Babin to survey a small township of 330 acres. The area was incorporated in 1908. Laurent Ducrest was elected the first mayor.

Melancon donated land for a chapel, and after some haggling between the priests in Breaux Bridge and St. Martinville (whose parishes met at Parks), permission to build one was granted in April 1903 and the church was built in 1905. Only four years later, 1909, a storm destroyed the chapel. The town went without a church for some time, building another one just in time for it to be destroyed by the Flood of 1927. It wasn't until 1938 that the Parish of St. Joseph's was finally formed with Father Hormisdas Fortin as the first pastor.

The first school in the Parks area was a two-room building on the east side of Bayou Teche.

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