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October 1, 2024October is an infamous month here in PoV Country. Though we have passed the peak of hurricane season, all of us know from experience that storms can form and strike even in the waning days of a season. In fact, it was 131years ago this month when one of the deadliest storms ever to strike the U.S. visited our unsuspecting coastline.
The Great October Storm of 1893 made landfall overnight on October 1st and 2nd. Known locally as “l’Ouragan de la Cheniere Caminada,” it was a severe, fast-moving hurricane that struck and inundated the large coastal fishing village of Cheniere Caminada, destroying the entire fishing fleet and nearly all the homes while killing half the village—over 800 souls. Across the entire coast, from the Atchafalaya to the Mississippi, total lives lost exceeded 1600. Accounting for boarders and other undocumented, the total lost is estimated at 2000.
Cheniere Caminada is located in Jefferson Parish, just west of Grand Isle. Many survivors of the 1893 hurricane found convenient resettlement just upstream in Leeville, Golden Meadow, and Côte Blanche in Lafourche Parish, where many descendent families still live 131 years later. Though the local name of the storm is borne by the village where the greatest loss of life occurred, it was not the only fishing village destroyed by the storm. In fact, the late 19th century Louisiana coast was punctuated with many smaller coastal fishing villages, often formed on a barrier island, or atop a coastal ridge, or just inside the mouth of a bayou on the natural levees.
One village built atop natural levees was Oyster Bayou in Terrebonne Parish. Catherine Cole, travel-writing for the New Orleans Daily Picayune just one year prior to the storm, described Oyster Bayou as “a winding uncertain oyster-reefed lane of salt water where sea-cat and sharks and big silver fish abound. It is only two miles long but a lugger has been known to take twenty-four hours or more in getting through it.” Her descriptions seem accurate still to this day: “On either side are sea marshes, a rotting, porous, fiddler-eaten crust of half earth, half sand, sown thick with a rank, coarse growth of sea rushes sharp enough to stab a murderer to the heart…”
Oyster Bayou was an important passage for 19th century oyster luggers, as they sailed their heavy catches from saltwater reefs along the coast to packing plants in Morgan City. After leaving the dangerous coastal currents and tides, oystermen steered northward up Oyster Bayou to Four League Bay, where they were protected by Point au Fer Island to the south. From there, Morgan City lay just 15-20 miles north. My great-great grandfather took this trek likely many times. According to family history, he would “naviguait les huites” (“sail the oysters”) westward from his home base in Cheniere Caminada en route to the Morgan City wholesale market. During the 1893 storm, the walls of his homes collapsed in the tidal surge, but 62 persons saved themselves under the fallen roof. His three boats were saved, too: They were out at work when the storm hit or otherwise deliberately put to sea to avoid being wrecked ashore by the surge.
In the same way that the home of my great-great-grandfather was wrecked, the village at Oyster Bayou, inhabitants of which he likely knew by family name as well as boat name, suffered the same fate. As the October 4th, 1893, edition of the Daily Picayune described it, “Oyster bayou had 30 inhabitants; now it has none.” Like many such storm-torn villages, it remains marked only by stumps of pilings that once supported camps, wharves, and work platforms.
The importance of Oyster Bayou as a fisherman’s passage between Gulf and inland waters was long known. Even before the great storm, fishermen petitioned the government to build a lighthouse for safe navigation. “There is no point on the coast where a light is more needed,” said the Daily Picayune in early 1893. In 1894, a petition called the bayou “the entrance inland for all small craft engaged in the oyster, fish, and other industries. The vessels, something over 300 in number, supplying the four oyster packers at Morgan City, pass through Oyster Bayou. Vessels frequently attempt to make the bayou at night, and lacking a light to indicate the entrance, sometimes sail 5 or 6 miles beyond it before discovering their mistake.” By 1904, a lighthouse was completed, with a lantern 47 feet above sea level and visible for eight miles.
Self-powered boats eventually carried their own lanterns (and now they carry GPS!), eliminating the need for the lighthouse at Oyster Bayou. When decommissioned in 1975, the structure was offered to a local historical society. But, regrettably, our preservation infrastructure in PoV country lacks funding for such projects. With no takers, the Coast Guard burned the lighthouse down. In a real way, however, that burn event was not the last “illumination” of the lighthouse, for it befalls us to remember and retell such stories–even after 131 years and many catastrophic storms. I hope our great-great-grandfathers would be pleased enough with just that.