A Railroad History of Avery Island

This is an article I wrote for someone else's blog back in 2010.  I reprint it for the first time here:

My name is Shane K. Bernard and I'm the historian and curator for McIlhenny Company and Avery Island Inc., located on Avery Island, Louisiana.

Map of Avery Island, Louisiana,
with railroad routes highlighted in yellow.
Source: Avery Island Inc. Archives

Avery Island is a salt dome in lower Iberia Parish, Louisiana. It's not an island in the traditional sense; that is, it's not surrounded by a body of open water. In fact, it's located about 3 miles inland from the nearest body of open water. But it is surrounded on all sides by wetlands — either grassy salt marsh, wooded cypress swamp, or slow-moving, muddy bayous.

The railroad came to Avery Island in 1883, primarily to serve the Island's salt mine. The railroad also served the factory that produced the world-famous TABASCO® brand Pepper Sauce. It, too, was (and still is) located on Avery Island.

Photo by author

I took most of the photographs in this series on restricted private property with the permission of the landowners, McIlhenny Company & Avery Island Inc. (my employers).

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The railroad reached Avery Island by crossing this trestle bridge over Bayou Petite Anse (actually the confluence of Bayou Leleu and Stumpy Bayou, which in turn flows into the nearby Petite Anse). I took this photo around 2000.

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This is what the trestle bridge looks like today (May 2010). Hurricane Rita washed away the top part of the trestle in 2005. Because the railroad no longer serviced the Island by that time (the rails on the Island having been ripped up in 2002), no effort was made to repair the bridge. (By 2000 the salt mine used eighteen-wheelers and barges to transport salt; McIlhenny Company likewise used eighteen-wheelers to distribute TABASCO® Sauce.)

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Here is Engine 455 crossing the same trestle bridge. This photo was taken in the early to mid-1950s; a diesel engine replaced Engine 455 around 1955.

Source: Avery Island Inc. Archives

Source: Avery Island Inc. Archives

Source: Avery Island Inc. Archives

Although Engine 455 ended up in a Houston scrapyard, someone at Avery Island salvaged its headlamp, which now sits in the McIlhenny Company & Avery Island Inc. Archives.

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Here is a circa 1955 photo of the diesel engine that replaced Engine 455. As you can see, the diesel engine is crossing the trestle bridge that leads onto the Island. (The boy in the photo is reminding the railroad workers that they are entering private property; I have been told this ceremony occurred annually for legal reasons.)

Source: Avery Island Inc. Archives

A few hundred yards down Stumpy Bayou are the trestle bridge parts washed away by Hurricane Rita.

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Note the marine life that had grown on the trestle. (My foot is in the image for scale.)

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Here is the rail bed — the elevated whitish hump running between and parallel to the grass and bamboo — as it looks today, heading south on Avery Island toward the salt mine.

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I took this photograph looking south on the same section of rail bed.

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Moving south, I found a small section of track still in place at the entrance to the McIlhenny Company corporate office.

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Right past the corporate office stands the McIlhenny station sign. There was never an actual station here, however, because the TABASCO® factory itself was the "station." (The older part of our corporate office served as the TABASCO® Sauce factory from 1905 until around 1980.) Incidentally, the station sign that appears in this photo is a new replica. The original sign shows up in the next image below; it is now preserved in the Archives. [Actually, as of February 2016 the sign is on display in the Barrel Warehouse section of the new Tabasco Museum tour.]

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In this circa 2000 image of the same spot, you can make out the spur (see arrow) leading from the main line toward the TABASCO® factory.

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This is looking at the station sign from the opposite direction. The yellow lines on this present-day photo show where the main line and spur (at right) would have been located.

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Following the spur toward the old TABASCO® factory leads to some kind of device on the ground (which I assume is related to the railroad). [I have since learned that the device permitted TABASCO® factory workers to manually move boxcars back and forth along the spur.]  The yellow line shows where the side track would have continued. As you can see, it would have gone right between the two buildings (where an enclosed walkway now stands). There the spur ended.

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This photo, taken around 1980, shows a diesel engine on the track between the two buildings. TABASCO®-related material would have been loaded/unloaded from the train at this location.

Source: McIlhenny Company Archives

A close-up image of the device that I assume to be railroad-related [See above bracketed note about the purpose of this device.]

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Heading south again on the Island, the rail bed passes this old sign with the number "9."

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Moving farther south the two rails became six rails. (Note the third set of rails below the arrow.) I was told that the extra set was a siding. This picture was taken in 2000.

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Here is the same spot during the railroad’s demolition in 2002.

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Here's another photo from the same area, showing the excavator and bulldozer that tore up the track; note the scrap in the dumpster.

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This is the same section of track, but looking in the opposite direction (north).

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This is what that same area looks like today.

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A close inspection of that spot reveals signs of its previous purpose — in this case, a railroad spike stuck in a rail plate.

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A few feet away is a rotting railroad tie that the demolition crew evidently forgot to pick up.

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This switch, photographed in 2002 on the same stretch of railroad, is no longer to be found. [I have since been told that someone on the Island made this switch into a mailbox.]

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We're now getting close to the Avery Island salt mine, which I'm unsure was ever so crowded with trains as depicted in this circa 1940 advertisement.  But perhaps it was, during the heyday of railroad transportation.

Source: Avery Island Inc. Archives

The rail bed reaches the salt mine and runs into this fence; note the salt mine structure in the background.

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Looking back northward from the same spot reveals this presumably railroad-related sign reading "D."

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Here is an 1899 photo of the salt mine with box cars present.

Source: Avery Island Inc. Archives

This circa 1930 aerial photo shows the salt mine; I've added yellow lines next to the railroad tracks. Note a spur leading off the main line.

Source: Avery Island Inc. Archives

This circa 2000 photo shows the railroad as it continued onto the salt mine property. I don't know if these rails still exist today because I did not return to the salt mine lease. (Perhaps another day and, of course, only with permission of the salt mine lessee.)

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A close-up circa 2000 image of the rails on the salt mine lease. These could be rails from the 19th century or early 20th century, given their decrepit condition. Most of the rails ripped up in 2002 appeared in good condition — nothing at all like these rails.

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Backing up a little, I found the rails that made up the spur shown in the above circa 1930 aerial photo.

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A close-up image of the spur rail as it appears today — almost buried beneath the topsoil.

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The spur rails lead into thick woods.

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This is where the spur rails once led: A gravel and sand pit on Avery Island. It shut down in 1917.

Source: Avery Island Inc. Archives

Shane K. Bernard, Ph.D.
May 13, 2010
Avery Island, Louisiana

Addendum of 19 May 2010:

Source: Avery Island Inc. Archives

With help from others it's been determined for sure that spur #1 on this aerial photo is the spur that led to the old salt mine (dismantled after the mine caved-in at that location in the 1890s) and spur #2 is the spur that led to the sand/gravel pit that closed in 1917. This photo is interesting because it shows both spurs in the same image. Again, the rails that make up spur #1 remain in good condition as of last week; while the rails that make up spur #2 were in terrible shape when I last saw them several years ago.

Finding History Right around the Corner: Heroism on the Cajun Home Front

The following serves as a good example of how history can be found right around the corner, literally, if you look for it.

In my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People I wrote:

As occurred elsewhere in the nation [during World War II], wartime anxiety sometimes escalated into wartime hysteria.  When a highly contagious disease wiped out hundreds of muskrats in the coastal marshlands and spread to nineteen south Louisianians, killing eight, rumor circulated that the outbreak had been caused by Japanese germ warfare.  Fearing widespread panic, the federal government moved in, quarantined all possible disease carriers, and asked the media to refrain from reporting the incident.  The disease was eventually identified as psittacosis, or "parrot fever," a viral infection transmitted by birds (p. 13).

As it turns out, a residence only a block from my house served as a quarantine house for some of those who contracted the disease.  As the Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate reported eighteen years later in 1961:

On March 3 [1943] the focus of the epidemic shifted from Ville Platte and Rayne to New Iberia.  Miss Antoinette Bourgeois, one of the nurses from New Iberia who had volunteered to help at Rayne, felt a pain at the base of her neck.  Miss Antoinette Bonin, also a nurse who had helped, felt the same pain plus a headache.  They were returned to New Iberia and placed in quarantine in a duplex at 142 Pollard Avenue.  Dr. Edwin L. Landry attended them and five women volunteers entered the house to care for them, knowing that their chances of ever leaving alive were about fifty-fifty.

142 Pollard Avenue, New Iberia, Louisiana,
as it looks today (July 2012).
(Photo by the author)

The article continued:

The volunteers were Miss Cecile Bourgeois, a sister of Miss Antoinette Bourgeois, two sisters of Miss Bonin, Miss Helen Hobart and Miss Remas Gerhart.  The physicians and Miss Katherine Avery, Iberia Parish Public Health nurse, entered the house frequently, always taking elaborate, almost ritualistic precautions.  The townspeople, however, were deathly afraid of the disease.  Some crossed to the opposite side of the street before passing the house.  When groceries were delivered they were left on the sidewalk.  Dr. Landry and Miss Avery were shunned.

The disease, however, was a potent one, taking the lives of both nurses Bourgeois and Bonin in March 1943.

Katherine Avery, one of the five nurses who entered
the quarantine house on Pollard Avenue.
(Source: Avery Island, Inc., Archives)

"Back in the house on Pollard Avenue," recorded the Sunday Advocate , "the five women were hopefully waiting out their 21 days quarantine after the deaths of the two nurses."  However, one of the five, Gerhart, contracted the disease.  "But the people of the community then decided that they had assumed more than their fair share of the risk and an old plantation home six miles outside town was obtained.  Three of the women were put in quarantine out there. . . . The [two remaining] women on Pollard Avenue waited out their 21 days and the quarantine was broken."  (Gerhart survived after "repeated transfusions from recovered patients" under the supervision of Dr. Landry.)

Old street identifications in the pavement,
New Iberia, Louisiana (July 2012).
(Photo by the author)

Much of this story transpired, commented the New Iberia Daily Iberian in response to the Advocate article, in "a house that still stands on Pollard Avenue" — as it stands today on that quiet suburban street . . . a quaint reminder of wartime heroism on the Cajun home front.

Nurse and patient Remas Gerhart, seated,
with additional nurse volunteers;
photo taken at 142 Pollard Avenue.
(Note house with tell-tale eaves in background.)
(Source: Sunday Advocate; original source unknown)

Sources: James H. Hughes, Jr., "Strange Malady Spread Terror through the Marshlands," (Baton Rouge) Sunday Advocate, 1 October 1961, p. 1-E; Jim Levy, "Talk of the Teche [column]," [(New Iberia) Daily Iberian], ca. 1 October 1961, n.p.

All the Same Place: Isla Cuarin, Côte de Coiron, Île Petite Anse, Petite Anse Island & Avery Island

I recently stumbled on a historical mystery while examining the online inventory of the Historic New Orleans Collection.   Going through its list of documents concerning the Attakapas region (south-central Louisiana), I noticed a reference to a 1799 survey map of an otherwise unidentified place called Isla Cuarin.

This is actually the second of two 1799 maps
of "Isla Cuarin" in the Historic New Orleans Collection.  
(Source: Historic New Orleans Collection)

The name "Isla Cuarin" struck me as similar to "Côte de Coiron," which a former professor and mentor of mine, the late historian Glenn R. Conrad, once claimed — unconvincingly, it seemed to me at the time — was synonymous with Île Petite Anse or Petite Anse Island, known from the late nineteenth century onward as Avery Island, Louisiana.  (See Conrad, Land Records of the Attakapas District, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, p. 86.) 

Avery Island is a rolling, verdant salt dome located in lower Iberia Parish, Louisiana.  It is home to a massive working salt mine, the sprawling semitropical estate known as Jungle Gardens, the private wildfowl refuge known as Bird City, and world-famous Tabasco brand pepper sauce (for whom I work as historian and curator).


A photograph I took of Avery Island in 2006
for Wikipedia's article about the geographic oddity. 
(Source: Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons.)

Intrigued, I asked the Historic New Orleans Collection for a copy of the Isla Cuarin survey map.  When the map arrived in the mail, I examined it immediately, but did not recognize the amorphous hand-drawn landmark in the survey. 

I realized, however, that the surveyor had not oriented the map in the modern way, with north facing toward the top of the page; rather, he oriented the map with east facing toward the top.

Adjusting the orientation, I saw that the landmark in question did indeed look very much like Avery Island.

A comparison of the 1799 map of "Isla Cuarin" (left)
with an 1810 map of Avery Island (formerly Petite Anse Island). 
(Sources: Historic New Orleans Collection; Avery Island, Inc., Archives.)

The more I examined the document, the more evidence I found to confirm this impression.  For example, the map showed not an "isla" (island) in the traditional sense (a land mass surrounded by open water), but, rather, a landlocked geographical feature — just as Avery Island is landlocked, sitting about three miles inland from the nearest body of open water.

In addition, the course of the waterway called "Bayou des Petite Cote" on the 1799 map corresponded to the course of Bayou Petite Anse, the name of the bayou that encircles Avery Island.  Likewise, the courses of other, lesser bayous on the map corresponded to those that meander around the perimeter of Avery Island.

The 1799 map identified a "cipriera" off the east side of the island, just as there has been a cypress swamp on the east side of Avery Island for as long as anyone can remember.

Moreover, the 1799 map identified a "praderia temblenta" (trembling prairie — that is, waterlogged prairie that trembles when disturbed) north of the island.  Such a prairie did exist near Avery Island, having been written about by explorers as early as 1779 and later by the interrelated Avery/McIlhenny family that owns the Island. 

The 1799 map gave the area of Isla Cuarin as 2,050 arpents (an arpent being an ancient French unit of measurement that is still sometimes used in Louisiana).  This is approximately the same size as Avery Island.  Indeed, an 1810 map of Avery Island gave the landmark's area as 2,074.75 arpents — a figure not terribly different for a period using inexact measuring tools to estimate the size of a land mass with fluctuating borders (according to the rise and fall of adjacent bayous, swamps, and marsh waters).

Most convincingly, however, the 1799 survey referred to an early land claimant named "Santyago Fontenet," which is the Spanish name of Jacques Fontenette ("Santyago" and "Jacques" both being forms of Jacob), an actual early owner of Avery Island.  The other claimant listed in the survey, Carlos Olivier Deverin, is no doubt Charles Olivier Devezin, who founded Olivier Plantation about seven miles from Avery Island — in fact, what I read as an "r" on the 1799 map may well be a "z".



Satellite image of Avery Island, ca. 2010.  (Source: Google Maps.)

For these reasons I believe the survey map of Isla Cuarin shows what was known for most of the nineteenth century as Île Petite Anse or Petite Anse Island and what is now known as Avery Island — making this 1799 map the earliest known map of Avery Island, and the only known map of the Island from the colonial period.

So it turns out Professor Conrad was right! 

But why was Avery Island called "Isla Cuarin" and "Côte de Coiron" in the first place?  Conrad suggested that the French word "Coiron" (spelled "Cuarin" by the Spanish) was a surname.  A companion document in the Historic New Orleans Collection bears out Conrad's suggestion, referring to Isla Cuarin's owner as "Dn. Cuarin" (i.e., Don Cuarin, Don being the equivalent of "Mr.")  While I have found no other references to Cuarin in colonial papers, there was an Antoine Coiron who owned land elsewhere in Attakapas during the same period.  Is he the same person as "Dn. Cuarin"?  Who knows, but I hope to find out.

Addendum of 10 April 2013

While examining historical papers in the Avery Island, Inc., Archives I noted a circa 1796 land document in which Spanish colonial governor Carondelet revoked the concession of "Antonio Coiron" in favor of a settler named "Lovelace" (Thomas Lovelace, a known early part-owner of what is now called Avery Island).

Detail of a 1796 Spanish land grant document
referring to "Antonio Courin"
(Antoine Courin) as a former claimant
of what is now Avery Island.
(Source: Avery Island, Inc., Archives,
Avery Island, La.)

The document does not actually mention the Island, but it clearly concerns this subject, given its references to four early owners of the Island (besides Coiron and Lovelace, it also mentions "Fontenet y Devezin," who are the aforementioned Jacques Fontenette and Charles Olivier Devezin) — not to mention the fact that the original document resides today in the Avery Island, Inc., Archives, in a collection concerning the Island's chain of ownership.

In short, it seems clear to me that "Isla Cuarin" and "Côte de Coiron" do indeed stem from the surname of Antoine Coiron.