JANUARY 18, 1892, The Times Picayune Newspaper
A THRIVING PARISH Rich and Beautiful St. Tammany
Its Population and Products Rapidly Increasing.
Healthful, Fruitful and Prosperous
Since the last census the growth and development of St. Tammany parish, in Louisiana, has rapidly increased in. population, in wealth, in products, in manufactures, and the important position it occupies in the eyes of the world as a health resort, all entitle it to some-
thing more than a passing notice.
In the last ten years St. Tammany has doubled her population; between 800 and 1000 new farms have been opened within her borders; new saw mills have been erected, equipped with the latest and most improved machinery; brickyards have sprung up from one end of the parish to the other, notably among these, and the finest in the state, are those at Slidell, St. Joe, a few miles further in the interior, others on the Abita, one or two on the Bogue Falaya, Bayou Lacombe and Bonfouca.
The culture of cane has assumed important proportions in the last twenty years. Every farmer has a cane mill. and not one of them needs to travel outside of the limits of his own farm for his sugar and molasses, while its export, which is large, is shipped by steamer, schooner and the East Louisiana Railroad.
Its truck farms, with their products of corn, potatoes, fruits and vegetables come to perfection in the parish. The output of her tar, turpentine. rosin factories, the sand, wood and charcoal industries give profitable and renumerative employment to hundreds of men and fifty or sixty schooners. as witness the statistics of the arrivals and departure of vessels from and to the Old and New basins daily.
The culture of the fleecy staple also has become of no mean importance in adding to the income of the St. Tammany farmer. The grape is indigenous to the soil, and the vineyards of St. Tammany have attracted the attention of every visitor and stranger, and wine of no mean quality and in paying quantities is produced.
Rice Arises
I come now to speak of the cultivation of a cereal which sixteen years ago was started as a mere experiment, and which have more than realized the wildest dreams of the most visionary farmer who ever entrusted one of its grains to the bosom of mother earth. I mean rice, and in order to understand fully the gigantic growth and progress of this branch of the industry of our parish, I may be pardoned if I digress and give a brief history of the cultivation of this important product in the state of Louisiana.
In 1876, I think, or thereabouts, the United States government's report showed that there were three rice producing states only, in the forty-four composing this union, namely: South Carolina, with 100,000 barrels a year; North Carolina, 55,000 barrels a year; Georgia, 50,000 barrels a year; Louisiana. showing up with the merely nominal number of 5000 barrels a year. The total amount of barrels from the four states, as will be perceived, being 210,000 barrels yearly.
But mark the change—it sounds like a fairy tale—Louisiana in 1890 comes to the front with a record of 350,000 barrels of rice, and in the year just closed it is estimated that she has with increased acreage added 50,000 or 75,000 barrels more to the output of the previous year, making a total of over 400,000 barrels, thus more than doubling the rice product of North and South Carolina and Georgia, the three and only other rice producing states of the Union.
Of this crop of 1891, over 400,000 barrels, the parish of St. Tammany has contributed 50,000 barrels, one-half of the total rice crop of the state of South Carolina; which until a few years ago, held the position and was considered as the foremost, the banner state of the Union, in this respect. Is not this a just cause of pride, that St. Tammany should produce 50,000 barrels, one- eighth of the rice crop of the entire fifty-nine parishes of the state.
Health Haven
In addition to all this, and not least, after the most careful research into facts and figures, the United States government's official report as to the health statistics of the United States places St. Tammany at the head of the list in point of health; San Antonio, Tex., second, and Waukesha third. St. Tammany has for some forty or fifty years been prominently held up before the world as a health resort, free, entirely free, from yellow fever, cholera and malaria, as witness the certificates and opinions of some of the most distinguished physicians of our own and neighboring states.
St. Tammany during the last four years has been out of debt, pays dollar for dollar to all to whom she may become indebted, has a surplus of some $7000 or $8000 in her treasury, has added in that tune nearly $600,000 to her assessable property, lowered the rate of taxation from 16 mills to 18 mills and put all its bridges in excellent order.
The police jury of the parish, appointed four years ago, have been mainly instrumental in this good work, and deserve the highest credit. They have, in their every act, kept steadily in view the honor, the prosperity and the advancement of their parish.
To Poitevent and Favre, the lumber kings of our state and of Mississippi, we raise our hats in acknowledgment of the immense benefit which has accrued to old St. Tammany in consequence of that spirit of enterprise, which has prompted this far seeing and energetic firm in building, at their own venture and expense, a line of railway (a branch of the Northeastern or Queen and Crescent Route) directly west from Pearl River.
Captain John Poitevent, while building, gave it the soubriquet of the "Little Transit Route," twenty-four miles to the Abita Springs (now famous throughout the world), and to Covington, thus reducing the hours of travel between New Orleans, Covington and Abita Springs, which formerly occupied from six to eight hours, to two hours and a quarter, a certainty of communication, a telegraph line to the Abita Springs and Covington, daily communication to and from these points. Solid trains, handsome freight cars, with a Wednesday and Sunday excursion in summer, and Sunday excursions throughout the winter, exclusive of the regular daily trains.
Property has increased in value all over the parish from 100 to 2000 per cent, according to location, and there is scarcely a foot of public land to be purchased in its length and breadth.. Game abounds—the deer, turkey, woodcock, partridge, grassee, kipe, robin, garde solief, snipe, duck; while the rivers and bayous swarm with fish, always so that the hunter and fisherman will always find ample cause for congratulation that they have not forgotten their rod or gun; while for the lover of nature no grander or more diversified forests exist on the planet, no finer specimens of that monarch of the forest, the oak, can anywhere meet the eye: there are no clearer, limpid, lovely and more romantic streams than are to be found here, nor are fairer women or braver men to be met with the world over.
Few parishes of the state can boast of more material and positive advancement - Ours is not a boom, but a steady growth.
J. S. Bossier.
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