People in south Louisiana don’t often pay attention to news from a relatively obscure research facility in Maryland, but the announcement that the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center is winding down its whooping crane breeding program has a special connection to us.
Jim Bradshaw
A thousand or more people lined the banks of the Atchafalaya River on a hot, sultry day in July 1933 to watch the installation of the first big segment of the first automobile bridge to span the river between Morgan City and Berwick.
Jim Bradshaw
Drought, dried up prices, surly neighbors and a bundle of dynamite made for hard times in the early days of rice farming in parts of southwest Louisiana.
One of the biggest losers was Charles Lowry who in 1893 bought 7,000 acres on the Mermentau River around the “Green House,” the historic residence (still standing) said to be one of the oldest houses west of the Atchafalaya Basin.
Am I misremembering (it happens regularly after a certain age), or are the mosquitoes late this year? We haven’t had a substantial rain at my house since the middle of April, and that may be why I haven’t heard the perennial summertime buzzing in my ears. But it seems to me that the mosquitoes have not paid close attention to dry times in the past.
The elevated span of Swamp Expressway that carries I-10 across the Atchafalaya Basin is a remarkable thing, but there were plans afoot to build an even more remarkable roadway across the huge wetland well before I-10 was even on the drawing boards.
In fact, the Sunshine Bridge across the Mississippi River near Donaldsonville was originally conceived as part of a toll road that would run from Lafayette through St. Martin, Iberville, Ascension, and St. James parishes to Lutcher, where it would cross the river and link to the Airline Highway and New Orleans.
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