Page 1

Marais Des Cannes: The History of Drainage

Of Some Words of Note

Marais des Cannes is a flood prone area located in Lafayette Parish where future development is planned.

The project would entail changing the existing drainage patterns to provide for commercial development and

a conservation area. Before those changes are implemented, it is important to understand the changes in

area’s historical drainage patterns.

Of Landmarks, Boundaries, and Peoples

The largest single landmark in the area is a campground. Traveling west to Texas from Lafayette, Louisiana

on Interstate 10, the KOA Exit at mile marker 97 leads to a Campground of America trailer park and its it

large recreational lake adjoin the planning area.

Local government is represented by both the City of Scott and Lafayette Consolidated Government. Part of

the planning area falls within the corporate limits of Scott while the remainder lies within the unincorporated

area of Lafayette Parish, under the governance of Lafayette Consolidated Government.

The planning area is blessed and cursed with over 60 inches of annual rain fall within a flat 900 acres that

only changes two feet in elevation as the water flows southward. The water is the source of fertility,

however, the area frequently floods and often crops are destroyed by the standing water. Portions of the area

were once used for dairy production and pasturage, but it is now used as hayfields.

The northern boundary is Rue Bons Secours, a French name that translates roughly Street of Good Aid.

Interstate 10 transects the middle of the planning area.

The southern boundary is marked by US Highway 90 and the Southern Pacific Railroad.

The western boundary south of the interstate is Andres Road, named after an Afro-American Family who

owned a 20 acres farm along the road.

The western boundary north of the interstate is Rue Septembre, named after the month when crops are

harvested and children return to school.

The eastern boundary north of the interstate is marked by Highway 92, leading to Best Stop, a butcher shop,

gas station, grocery store known locally and indeed worldwide. Its renown is based on boudin, a rice and

pork sausage cooked by Cajuns.

The eastern boundary south of the interstate is the Coulee Isle des Cannes, a slow moving stream that

meanders to the Bayou Vermilion, and thence Vermilion Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Water flowing through

the planning area eventually flows into the Gulf Stream and carried along the Eastern Atlantic Seaboard,

Nova Scotia, and thence on a grand circle to the eastern coast of Ireland. This stands in contrast to a great

counter-current of humanity that flowed into this project area in the past two centuries. We will have cause to

meet these divergent emigrant peoples from these regions as we tell this story.

Page 2

The grey area in the map that follows shows the floodway, which is subject to heavy inundation. The

diamonds show the location of bridges which acts as pinch points as water flows from north to South within

the planning area. This history is reflected in the bridges and their functions as the various groups of people

come into the area.

Page 3

Of Naming the Rose

Shakespeare said a rose by any other

name is still a rose; but the project

planners searched for name that would

convey the essence of the planning area.

They envisioned an area with both trees

and tall grass surrounded by a mixed

use development, where residential,

business and offices might be located

somewhat like their college alma mater.

Many of the planners graduated from

the University of Louisiana at Lafayette

where in the center of campus is

Cypress Lake, a place of memories and

inspiration as well as a point of

departure in urban design.

University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Cypress Lake1

The planners settled on marais, a Cajun French term for a low lying area, a place with both tall grass and

trees. Coulee Ile des Cannes is a slow moving stream, that runs through the center of planning area. The early

French settlers identified the place as an island of canes in midst of the prairies. The canes grew there

because the land was fertile and held water. The canes were used by the Native American to weave baskets,

build homes, and construct tools.

And so after naming our boundaries, our point of departure for urban design and the divergent peoples who

will come to the planning area, let us recount the area’s history.

Of French and Spanish Cowboys

New Orleans lies at the mouth of the Mississippi River, one of the great rivers of the world. The water that

flows along the banks of city drains from the Rocky Mountains in the West and Appalachians Mountain in

the East. The French identified rivers as sources of wealth along the Mississippi River in the American South

and along St. Lawrence River in Canadian North. And so lies New Orleans, balancing somewhere near the

middle of the North American continent riven by the Mississippi River.

Marais des Cannes does not drain to New Orleans and its great river. Rather, the little streams tumbles to the

Gulf of Mexico. No boat could sail up the stream from New Orleans because the stream is so shallow and

narrow except during times of heavy rain when it would only then be navigable by a pirogue or canoe..

The transportation system, though, connect the area from Florida to California. The earliest trails connecting

the lower Mississippi Valley to Texas and Mexico were developed by Native Americans. The early cattle

drives were mapped by the time of Civil War (1960-1865) as traveling just south of the planning area. The

Page 4

fords needed to swim cattle across the Bayou Vermilion are located what is now the bridge over General

Mouton Avenue in the City of Lafayette, a city of some 125,000 persons. South of the bridge, the bayou is

navigable, sufficient in depth for riverboats, but near Lafayette the stream narrows and shallows so that herds

of cattle from Texas could be driven to market by cowboys who spoke Spanish and French. From Lafayette,

the cattle trail meanders toward another crossing in Morgan City and thence to New Orleans. These French

and Spanish Cowboys represent the first wave in the countercurrent of settlers to arrive in the project area

from the distant shores of Europe.

Of Revolution and Manifest Destiny

Seeking to serve the same markets with the same goods, the Southern Pacific Railroad followed the same

general route as those used by these cowboys. The US government succeeded in controlling the

entire route of New Orleans to Los Angles through the Louisiana Purchase in 1801 from France, the Texas

Revolution (1836-1837) and its entrance as a state in 1845 and the territorial expansion of resulting from the

Mexican American War (1846-1848) into New Mexico to California. This far flung empire fulfilling the

Manifest Destiny was connected in the 1880’s by the federal government subsidies and private investment

through the railroad construction. The railroads would eventually bring the next wave of settlers to trace the

flow of water to its source in the project area.

Southern Pacific Railway, 1880's2

Of Irishmen and Creole

The labor to construct the railroad is thought to be Irish. The water would flow down Coulee Ile des Cannes

to reach Ireland through the Gulf Stream. That water would evaporate from the sea and fall upon potatoes

that would be infected with a blight running the crop in the 1840’s. The migration and population loss would

continue for over a century depopulating Ireland.

Workers Adjusting Railroad Tracks at a Sulfur Plant, Louisiana 19393

Many settled in Boston, but New Orleans had significant Irish immigration before and after the Potato

Page 5

Famine. Irish labors constructed the Transcontinental Railroad through the American Midwest. These Irish

immigrants are thought to have laid the rail line on the southern boundary of Marais des Cannes sometime in

the 1880’s. However, as the photo shows below, the hard physical labor of building a railroad by Irish Gandy

dancers in the Nineteenth Century were replaced the hard work of maintaining the rail lines by Louisiana

Cajuns and Creoles in the Twentieth Century.

These tracks were being laid just as the end of Reconstruction was coming to the end in Louisiana in 1876.

Prior to this date, federal troops occupied the Deep South to implement equality between Afro-Americans

and white Americans, and enforce the rights and privileges guaranteed by the newly adopted fourteenth and

fifteenth amendments. The slow march of increasing discrimination would be marked by Plessy vs Ferguson

(1886) when the US Supreme Court when the US Supreme Court declared that separate public

accommodations and facilities were legal.

Homer Adolph Plessy, a Louisiana French

Creole of mixed of African and European

ancestry, was prohibited from riding a

railcar in New Orleans. This precedent

began an era of segregation in the Deep

South and the railroads would themselves

be mired in Jim-Crow legislation.

Workers Adjusting Railroad Tracks at a Sulfur Plant, Louisiana 19393

Page 6

Homer Adolph Plessy charged with riding a whites only rail car in 18864

Even though the railroad companies could not rise above the constitutional issues of discrimination and

transcontinental politics, nevertheless the railroad line itself would have to be elevated to prevent flooding

when it crossed Marais des Cannes. The unintended consequence of this elevated rail line was that it would

act as a levee impounding water and causing upstream flooding. Moreover, the egress of water would be

pinched under the levee by a narrow bridge. Although the constitutional issues and the transcontinental war

have been resolved in this era, that elevated section and bridge still causes flooding to this day.

Of the Andres and Begnaud Families

Two separate families would be affected by the elevated rail line and its bridge. The Afro-American Andres

family purchased a modest parcel 20 acres, a quarter mile from the tracks. This nuclear family on a working

farm grew into an extended family during the Twentieth Century, each family sibling and their descendants

owned smaller parcels divided amongst themselves from the original plot. When the parcels became too

small or the Jim Crow laws to severe, members of the family would immigrate to the western coast of

America, probably using the very rails that caused their lands to flood.

The white Cajun Begnaud families would acquire sufficient wealth to purchase farms further upstream, but

they too would be subject to inundations. These families would sell off parcels occasionally to outsiders and

these outsiders would divide lands amongst themselves into parcels the same size the Andres family.

However, unlike the Afro-American Andres, these Cajun families would remain on the land even though

their plots were too small to support commercial agriculture. They would find small town work in the City of

Scott or urbanized work in the City of Lafayette.

Page 7

Of Where the West Begins

The closest and largest

city then and now to

Marais des Cannes

was the City of

Lafayette, which

during this era was a

major railroad repair

center. Workers were

attracted because the

railroads provided jobs

as well as access to

markets. For example,

McComb Veasey and

Freetown-Port Rico

are two neighborhoods

in the City of

Lafayette that grew up

around the railroad.

The railroad yard was

built near the current

Rosa Parks

Transportation Center.

Scott, where the Western District of the Southern Pacific Railroad Begins, Building on The Old

Spanish Trail, September, 19385

The next town traveling along the rail line west was Scott, where a sign marked the beginning of the western

district of the South Pacific Railroad. Scott took the motto of their municipality as “Scott, where the West

Begins.” The City of Scott arose around what would be the first of a series of fuel and water stops that were

built at regular intervals to serve the railroad as it thundered westward on a man-made current of steel and

wood.

Of Rice, Reapers, and Tractors

Carried on the tide of the railroads, white Protestant settlers from the American Midwest settled near Marais

des Cannes. They had previous introduced industrialized wheat agriculture to Kansas and Iowa just before

the Civil War. These farmers were well versed in using reapers and tractors and selling their crops for distant

markets with railroads. These farmers also arrived with technology to harvest well water beneath prairies and

from the bayous to control irrigation in their rice fields, which were no longer dependent upon rainfall. The

Cajun tradition of small irregular crops of subsistence rice agriculture was replaced by massive investment,

much of it from the British Isles.6

The epicenter of their Midwest farmers settlement was in Crowley, some fifteen miles west of Marais des

Cannes which was also one of those critical fueling and watering stations for the railroad.

Of Long Lots in Arpents and Townships in Acres

Moreover, these Midwest farmers immigrated into the Cajun Prairies where prior to the coming of the

railroad settlement had been rare. Studies of the Bayou Vermilion and its major tributaries show long lots like

Page 8

those in French and Acadian Canada. The narrow lots provided short frontage on the river, but long narrow

parcels measured in arpents, French measurements, as way of providing equal access to the rivers as sources

of transportation and wealth. The initial layout in Marais des Cannes do not show these patterns, but rather

the standard township and range system found in the rest of America east of the Appalachians Mountains.

These mile square parcels of 640 acres are laid out as a checkerboard grid without consideration to the local

landscape. However as the land would be parceled among descendants, the tracts took on the French long lots

configuration as a means to share access to roadways rather than streams.

World War I (1941-1919) would come

some 18 years after Plessy vs Ferguson

(1886). During the war, the need for rail

transportation from coast to coast would

provide farm to market transportation for

basic food crops needed by Allies; but after

the war, commodity prices would continue

fall well into the 1930’s Great Depression.

It would be in this era that Afro-American

would begin the Great Migration from the

American South to the north and west.

Cajuns farmers, burdened by the same

economic system of share cropping, would

immigrate to industrialized jobs in east

Texas near Port Arthur and Port Neches.7

Rice Harvest, Crowley, Louisiana, September, 19388

Of the Old Spanish Trail

During the period just before and after the World War I, local boosters sought to use tourism and economic

growth based on improved transportation to improve the fortunes of their economies undergoing economic

and social diversification. They planned roadways linking Florida to Texas, and thence to California joined,

forming an organization called the Old Spanish Trail Highway Association. The proposed roadway was

neither Spanish nor old nor a trail. Because this private association had no construction budget, they

identified the local roadways, hotels, and repair shops that could be cobbled together to link the Atlantic

Coast to the Pacific Coast.

Of Huey Long

However, Huey Long and his political descendants created a state budget

which taxed major corporations like Standard Oil and the Texas Company to

build highways, schools and hospitals. Before then only a rudimentary

system of public transportation, education and health infra-structure existed.

Prior to the Long era large corporations and plantations largely escaped

taxation, These taxes were used to constructed what is now known as the

state-wide highway system still in use today.

Senator Huey Long addresses the US Senate in 19359

Page 9

Part of this state highway network, US Highway 90 was constructed by 1936 with state funds. It s federal

route number was coordinated with the states numbering systems so as to link into a large highway system.10

The highway known today as US Highway 9012 was

constructed by 1936 with state funds, but its federal route

number13 was coordinated with the states numbering systems

so as to link into a large highway system. The route was from

New Orleans, Houma, Morgan City, Franklin, New Iberia,

Lafayette and thence to Texas.US Highway 90 followed the

path laid down by the Native Americans, French and Spanish

cowboys and the Southern Pacific Railroad. Though the route

might diverge occasionally from the previous routes, the US

Highway 90’s right-of-way adjoins the right of way of the rail

road as it transverses the southern boundary of Marais des

Cannes. Even though the highway is not elevated, its bridge

over Coulee Ile des Cannes is about as wide as the railroad

bridge, further compounding the issue of flooding causes by

transportation projects.

Vintage Louisiana US Highway 9011

Page 10

Itinerate Preacher and Wife with a push cart

US Hwy 90, near Marais des Cannes September, 193814

Driver with Freight Truck, US Hwy 90, near Marais des Cannes September,193815

Page 11

Of Surveying and Electricity

The resulting flooding was not created out of a lack of information. The center of the United States was

identified near Meades Ranch, near Tipton Kansas. The reference point was used for almost all land survey

measurements in the United States from 1927 until 1983 with the widespread use of computers. During the

height of the Depression, the Roosevelt administration funded the US Geodetic Survey to organize surveying

parties and field offices that employed over 10,000 including many out-of-work engineers. The field books of

these survey parties are still used today to determine the height of transportation importations being planned

in and around Marais des Cannes.

The Roosevelt Administration created the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), as part of the New

Deal in 1935. In the 1930s, the U.S. lagged behind Europe in providing electricity to rural areas due to the

unwillingness of power companies to serve farmsteads. The farms around Marais des Cannes were not being

served by local utility companies. Private electric utilities argued that the government had no right to

compete with or regulate private enterprise, despite many of these utilities' having refused to extend their

lines to rural areas, claiming lack of profitability. Private power companies set rural rates four times as high

as city rates. Under the REA there was no direct government competition to private enterprise. Instead, REA

made loans available to local electrification cooperatives, which operated lines and distributed electricity.

South Louisiana Electric Membership Cooperative (SLEMCO)16

is a REA cooperative, which was organized

in and around Marais des Cannes as the in 1937. Lafayette Utility System (LUS) serving the City of

Lafayette also faced opposition from private electrical companies when it organized one of the first

municipal electrical companies near the turn of the Twentieth Century. The resulting electrical infra-structure

began in 1900’s and the 1930’s crisscrosses Marais des Cannes. Entergy is a private electrical utility with

large electrical wholesale distribution lines running from North to South in Marais des Cannes. The lines

provide power to the City of Scott and the other smaller municipalities in Lafayette Parish. LUS has similar

lines running from east to west. There is a large power distribution center owned by Entergy located on a 28

acre parcel that adjoins the Marais des Cannes north of the Interstate.

Of Pipelines

In this period between the beginning of World War I and the end of World War II, Marais des Cannes was

identified as a major source of oil. A study of oil drilling records and aerial photographs by 1958 show the

planning area had two production facilities indicating significant oil reserves. In addition, the area was served

by a railroad siding for tank cars to transport oil to market. The area is also crisscrossed by gas pipelines

many of which are high pressure carrying gas to market far beyond Louisiana.

Of the Convoys and the Autobahn

During the period after World War I, Dwight Eisenhower as a Lt. Col. was a member of a US Army motor

truck convoy assign to test the readiness to traverse the United States. This was the era before the

construction of engineered roadways like US Highway 90. It took 62 days in the summer of 1919 to travel

from Washington, DC to San Francisco.

Page 12

When Eisenhower was a general in World War II, he saw the autobahns in

Germany to move traffic over a network of 2,400 miles with another 1,550

miles under planning and construction. From the outset of World War II, the

autobahn proved to be a key asset to Germany. During his administration

during the 1950’s, Eisenhower proposed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1954,

which set aside $175 million for the Interstate System on a 60-40 matching

federal and state ratio. The highway construction was financed by a two cent

gas tax when gasoline sold for less than twenty three cents per gallon.17

General Dwight Eisenhower, Germany, 194518

Official Louisiana Highway Map, 1963, showing Interstate 10 Construction Status19

The official Louisiana highway maps drawn in 1963 shows that the interstate transects the middle of Marais

des Cannes. The interstate was still under construction inching towards Texas some thirty miles westward

near the town of Evangeline. The four lane bridge over Coulee Ile des Cannes was sized in width and depth

similar to the prior inadequate railroad bridge constructed during the 1880’s and the highway bridge

constructed in the 1930’s. Similarly, the interstate also created a barrier to the flow of water similar to the

railroad and the highway. The result was second drainage pinch point was created in the middle of the

planning area pinch.

Page 13

It would seem that the placement of a new town would be better suited in a well drained area than in this

place by 1963 which had become bemired with drainage, transportation, electric, and pipelines systems. Each

of separate systems challenged developing a settlement out of whole cloth; but when taken together, it would

seem to present insurmountable challenges. But perhaps not for this community well steeped in the Cajun

traditions of draining low lying land.

Of New England and New France

Let us now recount the history of the ancestors of the current residents of Marais des Cannes and their

relationship to living in close proximity to low lying areas.

The Acadians settled Acadie (now known as Nova Scotia) in New France just as the English were settling

New England. While the English settlements were challenged by death and starvation, the Acadian

settlements proposed through a mix of farming and fishing. Rather than competing with the First Nations, the

Acadians selected the low tidal areas along the Baie Franciase (now known as the Bay of Fundy)., with the

highest tidal change in the world.

Farmland was created by building dykes and using the steep drop of tides to pull water from the behind the

dyked farmlands. In New France, a peaceful interaction was established between these First Nations and the

new comers, each pursing different ecological zones for their own purposes. This pattern contrasted with

New England where the settlers cleared and claimed former woodlands for their farms challenging Native

Americans for ownership. Eventually these Acadian settlers would be swept South in a wave of forced

human migration that resulted from the British Policy of ethnic cleansing after the British victory in the

Seven Years War.

Of Arboteaux

These alternating settlement patterns were taken from traditional practices in France and England. Many of

the early Acadians immigrated from a farming region of Poitou, France. Their farmstead were surrounded by

Bridge Dimensions within Marais des Cannes Planning

Area

Roadway Design

Area

Top

Width

Bottom

Width

Bottom

Depth

Interstate 10 Middle 70 24 22

South Pacific RR South 76 30 24

Cameron St/US Hwy 90 South 70 16 19

Page 14

extensive wetlands. Upon immigrating to Acadie, advanced knowledge of agricultural land reclamation

techniques were put to use. Among these technologies, the Acadians used a dike:

“The concept was simple: build a dike on an elevation contour just

a few feet above the peak elevation of the highest tide, thereby separate-

ing the highest salt marsh from the Bay’s influence. The impounded

salt marsh would eventually freshen with rainwater, and the soils were

soon amenable to agriculture. To prevent flooding the newly impounded

fields with excessive rainfall, a sluice was built at a location where the

naturally draining tidal creek would have crossed the dike. To prevent

saltwater tides from entering the field through the sluice, a one-way flap

gate was built into the sluice that allowed free flowing freshwater to

exit the diked land while denying saltwater tides from entering.

The combination of such a dike, sluice, and flap gate is known

as an aboiteau (plural aboiteaux).” 20

The traditional settlement pattern among the Acadians were hamlet based on extended families living in close

proximity to where three ecology zones meet: the uplands not subject to flooding, the converted tidal lands,

and the sea. Each of these zones provides a source of food which taken together provide a bountiful harvest

unlike in New England where settler starved during the first years. Additionally, the edge of these three

ecological zones provided resources that were not in competition with the First Nations. The English

organized farms as separate freeholds without community shared labor. In contrast, the Acadians worked in

large groups to create dykes benefiting the entire community.

The Acadian lands were one of the most productive in the New World, and so New Englanders wanted these

productive lands as their own. The Acadians were subject to transportation, a penal sentence used by the

English to disperse criminals. It was feared because many died on their way to distant lands. The significance

of the Acadian Exile is that it was the first time transportation was used on a whole people.

Arboteaux — Eighteenth Century in Acadie21

Page 15

Acadian Land, 1714, August, 201422

The result was the Acadiana Exile of thousands from Acadie in 1755 during

the times of the Seven Years War (1755-1762), also known as the French and Indian Wars. The displacement

would place Acadians in the English Colonies on Atlantic Seaboard, the Caribbean Islands, French Guiana at

the mouth of the Amazon, England, France, and the Falkland Islands, one of last inhabited places southward

toward Antarctica.

The settlement patterns used by the Acadians were not adopted after the exile. The Arboteaux were

abandoned. And so the wealth of the Acadie was discarded and Nova Scotia remains one of the poorest

provinces in Canada today.

Of Acadie and Marais des Cannes

With an eye on the lessons of the past and the traditions of a unique nation of peoples, these Arboteaux in

Acadie inspire and inform the proposed drainage improvements in Marais des Cannes.

Page 16

Cross section of Arboteaux dike system showing ecological zones in Eighteenth Century Acadie23

Cross Section of Marais des Cannes Proposed Improvements & Eco-Zones, Twenty-First Century

The fundamental difference between the two drainage projects is the type of water and the source of energy.

The Acadian system utilizes salt and fresh water with tidal energy. The Marais des Cannes project utilizes

only fresh water using gravity to drain the lands. However, the two approaches are similar in that both have:

Dyke or a berm to impound water

Drainage pipe connecting through the dyke

Excavation behind the dike

Planted grasses along the edge of water ways

Dry retention areas behind the dike or bern

The true similarity between the two systems is related to ecological zones. The physical infra-structure

enables inhabitation and commercialization of lands lying in close proximity to the three ecological zones

found both in Acadie and Louisiana: the uplands not subject to flooding, the converted wetlands lands, and

the ponds and lakes.

Endnotes and Photo Credits

Page 17

Over a forty year period of two generations, over 10,000 Acadians would seek their families split between

young and old, male and female, mothers and father, sisters and brother, children and parents dispersed far and

wide over the Atlantic. Only 5,000 would arrive in Louisiana, settling in area ecologically similar to those they

left behind in Acadie. Now, their descendants number in the millions and are dense in and around Marais des

Cannes. Given chance, they will rebuild a Twenty-First Century development similar to their Eighteenth Centu-

ry homeland, lost so long ago.

Page 18

End notes and Credits

1. University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Cypress Lake, Flickr.com, August, 2014.

2. Southern Pacific Railway, 1880's, raremaps.com. August, 2014

3. Workers Adjusting Railroad Tracks at a Sulfur Plant, Louisiana, 1939, wikepedia.org, August, 2014.

4. Homer Adolph Plessy charged with riding a whites only rail car in 1886, blogspot.com, August, 2014.

5. Scott, where the Western District of the Southern Pacific Railroad Begins, Building on The Old Spanish Trail,

September, 1938, www.loc.gov, August 2014.

6. The Cajun Tradition, 1990, Lauren Post, Cajun Sketches from the Prairies of Southwest Louisiana: From Prairies of

Southwest Louisiana, Baton Rouge: Louisiannfl.com, August, 2014.

7. Cajun Farmers, Michael LeBlanc, Cajun Ethnicity and Migration from Louisiana Agriculture to Texas Oil Refining,

Unpublished Master’s Thesis, University of Kentucky, 1982, August, 2014.

8. Rice Harvest, Crowley, Louisiana, September, 1938, www.loc.gov, August, 2014.

9. Senator Huey Long addresses the US Senate in 1935, wikepedia.org, August, 2014.

10. US Highway 90, Alfred E. Lemon, John T. Magill, and Jason R. Weise, Charting Louisiana: Five Hundred Years of

Maps. (New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Map Collection) 2003. Map 150: Map of Louisiana Showing Progress of

Hard Surfacing Program, page 273, August, 2014.

11. Vintage Louisiana US Highway 90, www.aaroads.com, August, 2014.

12. ibid. (11)

13. Federal Route Number, www.wikepedia.org, August, 2014.

14. Itinerate Preacher and Wife with a push cart US Hwy 90, near Marais des Cannes September, 1938, www.loc.gov,

August, 2014.

15. Driver with Freight Truck, US Hwy 90, near Marais des Cannes September,1938 www.loc.gov, August, 2014.

16. SLEMCO, www.slemco.com, August, 2014.

17. The Highway Construction, www.fhwa.dot.gov, August, 2014.

18. General Dwight Eisenhower, Germany, 1945, www.fhwa.dot.gov, August, 2014.

19. Official Louisiana Highway Map, 1963, showing Interstate 10 Construction Status, Collection of the Lafayette

Metropolitan Planning Organization, August, 2014.

20. Of Arboteaux, Whitney T. Broussard in “The Acadian Arboteaux: A Cultural and Economic Keystone, August, 2014.

21. Arboteaux constructed in 18th Century Acadie, http://genealogie.dalbiez.eu, August, 2014.

22. ibid. (21)

23. Cross section of Arboteaux dike system showing ecological zones in Eighteenth Century Acadie, museeacadien.ca,

August, 2014.

Page 19