Wells brought water, and Mowata

David Abbott, who came to Crowley from Michigan in 1888 and settled down to grow rice, was not the first farmer to realize that we needed more than rainfall to irrigate a big field of water-loving rice. But he is credited with being the first one to do something about it.
In 1894 he built a canal 15 miles long and 40 feet wide to irrigate his crop, and created a clumsy but workable system to lift water out of the canal and get it into his fields.
That set off a boom. By 1900, there were more than 400 miles of irrigation canals cutting through the south Louisiana prairies, and plans to build more of them and bigger ones.
But canals were expensive and couldn’t go everywhere. Some farmers in the Mermentau area tried to irrigate fields with shallow wells, but they didn’t give enough water to cover much ground. Part of the problem was that the early pumps couldn’t pull water from very deep.
But more powerful pumps were developed in the late 1890s, and growers began to think harder about deeper wells. One of them was S. L. Carey, who the Jennings Times reported in 1899, was “talking about … a river of pure water 150 feet below the surface, 150 miles wide, running from the Ozark mountains to the Gulf, through the prairie region.”
He was referring to aquifers, porous underground formations that hold water. The Chicot aquifer is the one beneath 15 southwest Louisiana parishes — Vernon, Rapides, Evangeline, Allen, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Jefferson Davis, Acadia, St. Landry, Lafayette, St. Martin, Cameron, Iberia, Vermilion, and St. Mary.
Carey thought he could tap into the deeper water, and put his idea to the test. The Abbeville Meridional noted several months later that he’d put down two wells on his land near Jennings, each six inches wide and reaching down to the aquifer.
“After a severe test had been made,” according to that report, “pump men and farmers who were present” said the two wells “unquestionably would supply water enough to flood 200 acres of rice.” When a part of the pump was removed, water shot eight feet into the air, the newspaper said.
That touched off another surge. A later account said that “a great many wells of this kind are being put down … where the canals do not reach, and in the majority of cases enough water is obtained … to flood from seventy-five to one-hundred acres.”
South Louisiana historian Donald Millet noted in a history of the rice industry, “Small rice farmers were no longer at the mercy of the large monopolistic canal companies; they could now have their own deep wells. The year 1899 saw fifty-five wells drilled in Acadia [Parish] and from Lake Charles to Crowley and Gueydan there were about 200 wells in operation, with predictions that the next year would see six wells sunk for every one put down in 1899.”
Those predictions came true, and by the turn of the century deep wells were being used to build big farms all across the once-parched prairie.
One of those in Acadia was the Jones Plantation midway between Crowley and Eunice. Deep wells were pumping abundant water for the plantation and surrounding area when the railroad built a station there in 1906. Landowners around the new station saw an opportunity to promote their well-watered lands (pun intended), so they named the station Morewater. They figured that putting the name on the railroad maps might help new farmers decide where to settle.
Local historians don’t know for sure why it was shortened to Mowata. The story persists that it was changed when the railroad finally built a depot there. According to the tale, when the station was finished and it was time to put up the Morewater sign, nobody could find a board long enough to print the whole name in the letter size required by the railroad. Thus, it was abbreviated to Mowata.
I can’t vouch for the authenticity of the tale, or deny its possibility, but as far as I know nobody’s come up with a better explanation.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.