Cypress Logging in the Atchafalaya Basin

Prior to development of the modern Atchafalaya Floodway, the basin maintained normal water level fluctuations for millennium. Some seasons the water levels rose significantly; other times, not so much. This rich mix of wet and dry conditions created an amazingly productive ecosystem that attracted wildlife and, of course, humans. Native America tribes inhabited the swamp for centuries, long before the first Europeans arrived in the early 18th century. The Chitimacha Tribe, which still flourishes today, lived in several villages on the swamp’s “high” ground. Europeans and French-speaking Acadians began settling in the basin in the early 19th century. The vast, nearly impenetrable swamp became the property of the United States government following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Several years later, after Louisiana became a state (1812), the federal government sent surveyors into the Atchafalaya to survey all of these government-owned properties. Congress passed two significant pieces of legislation related to the basin: the Swampland Acts of 1849 and 1850. These acts identified certain lands that qualified as overflowed and swamp land. Once identified, these lands within the basin were transferred from the federal government to the state. The purpose of the acts was to get these lands into private ownership to stimulate commerce and generate a tax base while creating a funding source for flood protection and related infrastructure projects. Prospective buyers purchased these swamplands from the State Land Office and received a patent. For the next twenty years or so, the basin swamp underwent minimal timber harvesting. Independent axmen harvested the best trees by hand and floated the giant logs to make-shift sawmills located at sites around the basin’s perimeter. The primitive harvest methods were completely dependent on annual overflows of the natural waterways to float logs to mills. The swampers, as the early basin lumberjacks came to be known, typically felled trees in the winter and hoped for high waters in the spring to make transportation possible. But the spring floods did not always occur. In the early days, this made the logging business unpredictable. The vast old-growth cypress stands that existed there for hundreds of years had not yet succumb to large-scale technological ingenuity and industrial capabilities—but that day was coming, full-steam ahead.

A number of factors contributed to the rapid development of the cypress industry in the Atchafalaya Basin. The expansion of the national railroad system throughout the country in the decades after the Civil War opened up new markets for lumber products. With numerous rail lines radiating out of the New Orleans’s metro area, lumber mills in the southern part of the state had a direct outlet to markets throughout the country. Schooners and steamers had access to major industrial ports along the nation’s coast and north along the Mississippi River to the Midwest. The Timber Act of 1876, which followed in the wake of a major economic recession, allowed for the sale of vast tracts of swamplands. Additional lands were sold after passage of Louisiana Act 75 in 1880, which opened up additional swamp and marsh acreage for sale. As a result of these favorable land deals, Louisiana’s swamplands, including the Atchafalaya Basin, advertised from 25 cents to $1 per acre. The numerous timber companies, run by savvy businessmen from outside of the state, flocked to southern Louisiana and purchased thousands of acres of virgin cypress forests. They built several state-of-the-art sawmills on the basin’s peripheries and harvested timber using teams of swampers, new equipment, and sophisticated logging practices. Within a year, they had made back their investment in land purchases. Within a few years, many of these timber concerns became multi-million-dollar companies.

When the captains of industry arrived, they had all the right pieces in place to fully develop this new enterprise: tens of thousands of acres of cheap swampland, access to an abundant (if finite) resource, a local labor force, natural waterways for floating the rafts of trees to sawmills, and a demand for a superior wood product during a time of epic growth in American cities and communities. By investing in and deploying new technology, primarily steam-powered equipment, these industry leaders made swamp operations efficient and highly profitable. The volume of extensive, almost pure stands of cypress in the basin must have astonished these businessmen. They brought with them the technical capacity to generate economies of scales in all aspects of the business. Within a short span of time, these lumbermen acquired the majority of the Atchafalaya cypress swamp. Their business acumen allowed the industry to prosper. In the process, they grew the industry and the associated markets.

In 1902, Frank B. Williams established the F. B. Williams Cypress Company, one of the dominant firms in the cypress industry. By 1905, he owned 86,000 acres (about the size of Las Vegas) with an estimated billion board feet of standing timber and four huge sawmills in the region, including the largest sawmill in the world in Patterson, Louisiana. Born in Shiloh, Alabama, Williams went to work for a railroad company with a contract to build a line from New Orleans to Houston. His job was to go out in advance of the railroad and procure railroad ties, which were made of cypress. In this capacity, he spent a lot of time out in the swamps looking at different tracts of timber and coordinating with various landowners to find material.[3]

[3] A 12-inch, by 12-inch wide, by 1-inch thick board was one board foot, or 144 cubic inches.

According to Anna Burns who wrote about Williams in 1980, he started working for Charles Morgan’s Louisiana and Texas Railroad in 1869. This was at the peak of major railroad expansion throughout the country. “Williams became a contractor for the extensive trestle construction along the route,” Burns wrote, “learning in the process how to manage men. Williams won their admiration, it is told, as ‘a square boss, if he does drive,’ and one who ‘knows his business, even if he is young.’ The hard outdoor work toughened his physique; he was remembered as being ‘tall, slender, wiry, alert, quick-eyed, and active.’ The construction work went well as the line passed through Morgan City, Louisiana, but stopped suddenly near Patterson when news came that the railroad had fallen into the hands of a receiver. With no more construction, and out several thousand dollars, Williams was left with lots of building materials, some tools, a gray riding horse, and $25 cash…. Fate could not have left him in a better location in which to apply his business acumen to the burgeoning lumber industry. He had seen the dense cypress forests and knew of is durability in railroad construction.”[4]

[4] Anna Burns, “Frank B. Williams,” Journal of Forest History, Vol. 24, No. 3 (1980), 5-6.

Desperate for work and low on funds, Williams sought out, and built a relationship with, a local sugarcane plantation owner known as Captain John Pharr. Williams convinced Pharr to invest in a new sawmill and timber harvesting venture. The two subsequently formed the Pharr & Williams Lumber Company and successfully operated that entity for twenty years. Then in 1892, Williams bought out Pharr’s interest in the business and ran it independently for ten years. By that time, Williams had amassed a sizeable acreage of swampland; about 60,000 acres (93 square miles). He acquired these lands for no more than a dollar an acre. In 1902, he formed the F. B. Williams Cypress Company and eventually brought all four of his sons into the business. By 1905, the F. B. Williams Cypress Company grew to become one of the largest timber operations in the country. 

Williams was one of the first to deploy cutting-edge technology and steam-driven machinery to increase the efficiencies of all timber operations in the swamp. His ideas and methods revolutionized the cypress logging industry. “F. B. Williams was a very astute individual, and he corresponded around the country,” said Rudy Sparks, the current vice president of Williams, Inc. “We have reams of correspondence in our files dating back to the 1880s coming forward, where they were writing and dealing with boiler companies in Chicago and steel manufacturers in the Midwest and up the East Coast. I mean, it was amazing, the amount of correspondence that was going on between this company in the 1880s and people throughout the country looking at new technology, looking at new ways, new ideas.”[5]

[5] Sparks interview.

In the early 1900s, Williams built an electrically-powered overhead monorail system for his massive sawmill in Patterson. The system could move huge volumes of lumber cut to pre-defined, standard sizes. This dimensional lumber was stacked in the lumberyard to be loaded onto railcars or schooners and shipped to markets around the country. Further, the steam-power electricity generating system at the mill had enough surplus power to provide electricity to all of the townspeople in Patterson. Similar to the non-stop operation of a large sugarcane mill during the annual grinding season, these gigantic steam-breathing sawmills required a constant supply of logs to feed the expensive operation. 

Williams perfected the use of steam-power machinery inside the swamp as well. He deployed a fleet of pullboats and later overhead cableway skidder systems to extract the giant trees at a pace and scale not witnessed by any of the local swampers. “The industry brought technology to all these people that they had never before seen, and it was running at warp speed for them,” said Sparks. “It had to be amazing to these people to see how rapidly the technology was changing and the industry was changing from 1880 to 1930. I mean, we’re talking about a fifty-year period. Between Williams and all the other players in the industry, we basically harvested a 1.2-million-acre virgin forest in a matter of fifty years that had an average of 20,000 board-feet of cypress saw timber per acre on it, some more than that, some 40,000, 50,000 board-feet per acre.”[6]

[6] Sparks interview.

Williams’ main competitor was a giant industry figure himself: R. N. Downman. By 1900, Downman had amassed a vast cypress enterprise that included majority ownership in  five cypress companies (click to read article)  and sizable land holding in the Atchafalaya Basin and other swamplands. His largest operation was the Bowie Lumber Company located in the Lafourche region west of New Orleans. The press labeled Downman the “Cypress King” and claimed that his annual output in cypress lumber was the greatest in the South. Downman backed into the business by marrying the daughter of William Cameron, one of the largest owners of timber in the late 19th century. Within five years, Downman’s Louisiana operations reached $8,000,000 (in 1905 dollars) in value.[7] His cypress enterprise controlled some 160,000 acres (250 square miles), roughly one-half of it in the Atchafalaya Basin. The Downman conglomerate owned and operated a fleet of pullboats, dredge boats, and other state-of-the-art machinery for harvesting trees in the remote swamps. Downman ran his enterprise from a main office in New Orleans, which emerged as the central market place for the sale of cypress lumber and shingles throughout the country.[8]

[7] “A Journey through the Vast Downman Cypress Interests with Camera and Pen,” American Lumberman (Aug. 5, 1905).

[8] "R. H. Downman and the Louisiana Red Cypress,” Lumber Trade Journal (Aug. 1, 1901).

H. B. Hewes, Downman’s chief executive manager, ran the Jeanerette Lumber and Shingle Company, one of the major cypress landowning firms in the region. The company got its start in 1888. By 1905, Jeanerette Lumber owned 300,000,000 board feet of standing cypress on 28,000 acres of land, including large tracts near Bayou Long, Belle River, and Lake Verret—all in the basin swamp. The company’s large sawmill in Jeanerette was on the basin’s western margins. The paddle wheeler Amy Hewes towed the rafts of logs to the mill from Bayou Teche and through the dredged Jeanerette Canal. Overtime, the company acquired an additional 45,000 acres of swamplands—making it today one of the largest landowners in the Atchafalaya Basin.

The vast expanse of cypress in the basin remained relatively untouched until the advent of steam-powered machinery in the late 1880s. A set of novel innovations—the dredge barge, the pullboat, and the overhead-cableway skidder on rails— revolutionized harvesting operations. These technologies increased the efficiencies and maximized the output of logs available to be pulled out of the swamp, floated to the mill, and manufactured into finished lumber. With this improved machinery, timber companies did not have to rely on the annual high waters to get access into the deep swamp. The logging canals and pullboats made year-round harvesting possible and economically feasible, regardless of environmental conditions. The cost of operating this equipment was steep; however, it allowed for higher efficiency, higher output, and huge economies of scale—all of which insured a substantial profit from the milling operations. This new industrialized process made quick work of what had previously been considered an impenetrable forested landscape. 

In order to get a pullboat operation imbedded deep in the swamp, logging canals had to be dredged. Once a timber company identified a tract for harvesting, surveyors laid out the right-of-way for the logging canal. These logging canals were strategically placed on the landscape to gain access to as much timber as possible. Built forty feet wide and six feet deep, these canals provided the access needed for the pull boats and related equipment. The companies often hired dredging contractors to do the heavy digging. Utilizing massive steam-powered dredges mounted on barges, these contractors set to work dredging the long, linear canals. To assist with removal of large tree stumps, each dredging crew included an expert in the use of dynamite to “blow” the stump. At approximately 300-foot intervals, they dug out wide spots, known as “pockets,” where the pullboat would be situated and allowed room to maneuver. The pockets had to be large enough to accommodate the storage of floating logs, which would be pulled out of the canal in singles or bundles to be made into a larger raft for final towing to the mill. These massive rafts consisted of thousands of logs, some of which sank to the bottom of lakes and waterways, only to be discovered decades later by opportunistic and crafty locals seeking fortune with “sinker cypress.” This cottage industry continues to function into the 21st century.

As the harvesting progressed deeper into the swamp, the canal network continually expanded. Similar to the hundreds of miles of oilfield canals dredged through the coastal Louisiana marshes in the post-World War II era, the logging canals dug during the cypress hay-day left an indelible footprint across the basin landscape that is visible on contemporary air photography. Where possible, these oilfield canals used the existing logging canals by expanding them to seventy feet wide and eight feet deep.

Canal dredging went hand-in-hand with the pullboat operations in the cypress swamps, noted Donald Davis in his definitive work on Louisiana canals. The logging canals made the extraction of the resource economically efficient and workable year-round. Contractors dug shorter laterals out from the main canal. These smaller canals were always slightly curved at the junction with the central channel, so that the logs could be pulled easily around the corner and not get jammed up on the bank.[9]

[9] Donald W. Davis, "Louisiana Canals and Their Influence on Wetland Development," (Ph.D. dissertation, LSU: 1973).

On occasion, landowners split the cost of canal construction. In 1910 for example, F. B. Williams and Jeanerette Lumber agreed to dredge a canal from Bayou Long to Willow Cove through swampland owned by Jeanerette Lumber. “A right of way of sufficient width is to be furnished without charge to them and cost of dredging the canal is to be borne equally between the 2 parties… Both parties have the right to use the canal with pull boats, dredge boats, etc,” noted the record.[10]

[10] St. Martin Clerk of Court, Conveyance #35340

Huth and Aycock, one of the first wetland dredging firms, excavated most contracted canals in the basin. The company built the canals around Grand Lake, along with the Hanson and Ivanhoe Canals. With nine dredges, four draglines, and a fleet of barges and towboats, Huth and Aycock supplied the lumber companies with the excavation equipment necessary to make the swampland accessible. Company ledgers from Hugh and Aycock reveal the extent of the dredging work conducted for the cypress logging companies during early 20th century (see below).

As the canal system expanded, so too did the range of the pullboat system and its harvesting capacity. The dragging of these logs back to the pullboats through these lanes or trails created unique hub-and-spoke patterns across the basin floor. These lanes resembled a “fantail” shape. A typical pullboat operation required a dozen or more of these runs on each side of the logging canal or bayou. More than a hundred years later, the original pullboat lanes and logging canals can still be seen from aerial photography and satellite imagery. “Pullboating was a complete success,” wrote Ervin Mancil, a former swamper, “as logs could be efficiently dragged year-round from distances approaching a mile.” (96) Mancil wrote a dissertation in the 1970s about the history of the cypress industry in Louisiana. He collected hundreds of rare photographs from the early logging days in the swamps and donated them to Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. Several of those images have been reproduced for this digital project.

Timber companies signed long-term contracts with pullboat operators to pull the timber and secure the logs together in huge rafts for transportation to the sawmill. Some of these pullboat contracts extended for several years. A pullboat crew consisted of about fifteen men: engineer, fireman, wire guider, boomer, wood passer, whistle blower, and chain gang foreman with four men working for him. It cost approximately $41.50 per day in the early 1900s ($1,300 in 2021 dollars) to run a pullboat operation in the basin.[11] Contractors often incorporated more than one pullboat to handle a large timber contract. These long-term contracts ran into the tens of thousands of dollars. Other costs for the contractors included: camp boats to house workers overnight, land-based log cabins, barges, small gas-powered boats, dugouts, flatboats, and various tools. A total investment for a pullboat contractor could run $20,000 in the early 1900s ($500,000 in 2021 dollars), not including labor. With these high capital costs, contractors had to have some guarantees on what they could make each season. On average, they charged between $2 and $4 per thousand board foot to cut, pull, raft, and tow the logs to the mill. J. F. Nuttall, timber estimator for F. B. Williams, testified that he paid $3 per thousand for “floating timber” in 1893 ($92.20 in 2021 dollars).[12]

[11] Des Allemands Lumber Co., Limited v. Morgan City Timber Co.” Southern Reporter, 1906.

[12] Norgress, 35.

A pullboat crew could harvest over twenty thousand board-feet of cypress in a day or the equivalent of about forty logs. An average-size cypress tree could contain several hundred board feet. A giant bald cypress might contain a thousand board feet of dimensional lumber. “The best trees are said to be three hundred and four hundred years old,” noted the Daily Picayune in 1899. “These trees average a height of sixty feet, with a diameter of twenty inches.”[13] An average pullboat run in the swamp produced about 10,000 board feet to the acre, with sixteen to eighteen trees per acre. In a typical month, a pullboat crew pulled between 200,000 board feet and 500,000 board feet from the swamp. At the height of production, a crew could harvest an average of six million board feet per year. This equated to clear-cutting an estimated six hundred acres, or nearly one square mile, per year. It is important to note this number is for one crew, and there were several pullboat crews operating in the basin year-round. During the industry’s peak (1913-1916), Louisiana cypress companies harvested on average one billion board feet a year.

[13] “Over Supply of Cypress and Pine,” The Daily Picayune (7 June 1899), 4.

The steam-powered equipment allowed the industry to scale up the harvesting process. But these sophisticated operations still required manual labor and teams of skilled timber crews who knew the swamps like the back of their hands. Swampers were typically born and raised in the Atchafalaya Swamp area. They had keen knowledge of the waterways and the terrain. They spent all day working knee-deep in the mucky water and could handle themselves in boats of all sizes. These people lived in worker camps or “skidder camps” with names such as Bayou Chene, Bayou Pigeon, and Belle River. Depending on the time of year and area of location, crews stayed overnight on quarterboats parked in canals. Their families often accompanied them to the company camp sites. Few, if any of these swampers had much formal education. And not all of them could speak English. But they all possessed the necessary skillsets required for this type of grueling work in a harsh, unforgiving environment. They were the unsung heroes of the cypress industry. Without them, and their traditional ecological knowledge, the heavy machinery was worthless.

Much of the labor force consisted of poor blacks and whites, along with experienced lumberjacks from northern latitude logging communities. The swampers went in ahead of the pullboat and railroad skidder crews to mark, girdle (deaden), and cut down the trees. This was back-breaking work for men who were constantly surrounded by dangerous elements—wildlife, extreme weather, heavy equipment, sharp tools, and falling trees and limbs. Except for gloves, they wore little protective gear. Serious injuries and even fatalities were common among the swamper population. 

The main tools of the swamper were the ax and the crosscut saw, known locally as the passe-par-tout. Cutting down a large cypress tree required muscle power, endurance, balance, and quick reflexes, especially when a fallen tree suddenly shifted direction. “Typically, back in the day, the very top of the tree could be no smaller than 14 inches in diameter,” explained Sparks, “so they would take the tree from its initial base all the way up to where the tree reached 14 inches in diameter, and they would cut the tree at that point and leave the top in the swamp as scrap, and leave the butt standing—taking out basically the trunk of the tree.” 

When stumps got in the way, they blasted them into bits with dynamite. Aside from broken equipment, injuries, or inclement weather, the extraction process continued uninterrupted year-round, from sun-up to sun-down, tens hours a day, five to six days a week. 

At the end of a long work day, the swampers got in their little boats—some of them gas-powered “putt-putt” boats—and went back to the campsite to eat a meal and get a night’s sleep. They had a little heat at the camps for cold nights and kept cool in the summer by dipping into the water. They lived with mosquitos, horse flies, gnats, alligators, snakes, and critters of all kinds. These men got paid a dollar or two per day. It was hard, grueling work, but it laid the foundation for unique swampland culture that thrived in the basin for multiple generations.

The peak of timber harvesting in the Atchafalaya Basin occurred between 1908 and 1918, when the state produced about a billion board feet of cypress per year. “Now with improved machinery, no cypress swamp is safe from the logger,” a local newspaper reported in 1909, “and the cutting is progressing at a rapid and ever-increasing rate until the annual cut along reached about 500,000,000 board feet.”[14] That same year, the U. S. Bureau of Corporation estimated the amount of standing cypress in Louisiana at 15.7 billion board feet. The Louisiana Conservation Commission estimated that the state cut an average of 653 million board feet per year from 1909 to 1912.[15] According to Rudy Sparks, F. B. Williams boasted that the Patterson mill had the capacity of 150,000 board feet per day. At 350 days of operating, the Patterson mill produced 52 million board feet.

[14] “Louisiana Ranks First in the Production of Cypress Timber,” Daily Enterprise-Leader (May 11, 1909), 3.

[15] W. R. Mattoon, “The Southern Cypress,” USDA Bulletin 272 (1915), 3. ( click here to download )

The F. B. Williams Cypress Company established a system for estimating the total board feet of timber on each tract of company-owned swampland, right down to the decimal point. “It was all about numbers,” Sparks stated. “This was a very sophisticated and a very competitive business.” A close-look at the original timber surveys from the company offer valuable insights into the enormous volumes of timber in the basin in various sections over a given period. These figures were taken in the field by the chief estimator and then tabulated onto pre-printed forms. A collection of bound record books provides detailed descriptions of each area, along with sketches on plats. For example, in the area known as Big Buffalo Cove, east of Lake Fausse Point, the company land surveyor and timber estimator, J. F. Nuttall, made a detailed timber count in 1908-1909. The timber on this tract averaged about six thousand board feet per acre, which indicated that it had been harvested once before, likely in the late 1880s when Pharr & Williams first got started in the business and cut down the larger trees. Nevertheless, this 319-acre tract still held over two million board feet of timber, including 3,285 cypress trees. Averaged out across the entire 85,000 acres of swampland owned and managed by Williams, there remained over half a million cypress trees in place, just on the Williams’ property alone. It’s important to note that these figures were gathered at roughly the halfway point of the fifty-year life of the cypress industry. 

It was not uncommon for timber companies to go back into an area more than once over the course of several decades to harvest trees. It depended on the volumes that were left behind after each cut and the cost involved in harvesting the remaining timber. The economics had changed following the peak of production at the end of World War I, but the companies still needed to constantly feed the mills with raw materials. As supplies dwindled, timber companies had to find ways to reduce cost while extracting the last of the commercially viable timber in the basin. 

By the late 1910s and 1920s, the industry began deploying overhead cable-way skidder systems, designed to pull logs along the ground with the small end elevated, for harvesting trees in areas with lower volumes. The operation worked similar to the pullboat method, but it did not require the digging of canals. Instead, crews chopped down lanes through the forest and blasted out the stumps. Tupelo trees and other smaller trees were laid down the lane to form a foundation for laying down and securing a rail spur. This essentially resembled constructing a railroad through the desolate swamp—something that F. B. Williams had experienced in his younger days. With a tract firmly in place, crews moved in a steam-powered locomotive with a skidder and winch system on rails, along with logging carts and other equipment. The key to this particular operation was finding a giant “spar” tree in the middle of the section that could be used to support the overhead cable pulling system. A man climbed this tall tree and installed a pulley-like unit from which to cradle the steel cable that went out into the forest to gather the felled logs. Instead of dragging the trees along the mucky swamp floor through stumps, the skidder’s engine hoisted logs off of the ground and winched them into the logging carts. Once fully loaded, the carts backed out of the rail spur to offload the logs near the mill or near a waterway. “It’s the same mechanical principle,” Sparks explained. “You’re just accessing it by railroad rather than by water. It’s a lot easier. Bottom line, it was cheaper to build railroads than it was to dig canals.” 

An area on the east side of Grand Lake, known as Diamond Slough, was one the last cypress stands to be harvested by F. B. Williams from 1924 to 1927. Interestingly enough, crews used two different methods to harvest the trees. A part of the tract was logged by skidder and the other section was logged by traditional pullboat. Reports, maps, and modern aerial imagery indicate the precise survey methods used to design and construct the network of canals and lanes from which to extract the last of the cypress timber on Williams’ property. By the time that timber crews moved into the Diamond Slough swamp for the last big harvest, the lumbermen all across south Louisiana knew full well that the once enormous supply of cypress in the Atchafalaya Basin had been almost completely exhausted.  

Warning signs of a diminishing supply of cypress surfaced as early as 1909. That year, a U.S. forestry expert submitted a report to the Louisiana State Forester, which estimated that fifteen billion board feet of timber remained to be harvested. At the current rate of consumption—around a billion board feet a year—the supply would last approximately fifteen years. Reforesting in the swamps would not be economically feasible for the cypress companies. Experts deduced that in order to grow a cypress tree from the seed to a minimum commercial size of 12.8 inches in diameter and twenty feet above the ground would require a period of three-hundred years. “[This] would hardly justify a business standpoint to attempt to practice forestry, as far as cypress is concerned,” noted H. B. Hewes, an industry leader who served as chairman of the Cut-Over Swamp Committee for the Southern Cypress Manufactures Association. “The most practical and most profitable manner of employing our cut-over cypress timber lands,” Hewes added in 1909, “is to drain them and clear them and put them in cultivation.”[16] The next year, Hewes reiterated this reality to the association. “Members of this Association own over two million acres of swamp lands which are being depleted of their timber at an exceedingly rapid rate.” He stated that cypress grew too slow to warrant continued practices of forestry in the swamps. A second cut of timber could not be obtained for another seventy-five or a hundred years.[17] Without any prospect for regenerating the resource during the lifespan of the existing sawmill operations, it was obvious to industry leaders that the timber supply in the basin would be depleted in a matter of years.

[16] “No Reforestation for Cypress Lands,” Times-Picayune (1909-11-19), 4

[17] Norgress, 73.

By the late 1920s, very few stands of commercially harvestable cypress remained in the Atchafalaya Basin. In 1927, the Southern Cypress Manufactures Association, which had been in existence since 1905—and had been led by Louisiana firms—moved its headquarters from New Orleans to Jacksonville, Florida. By then, the Louisiana members no longer participated in the meetings.

Local newspapers reported in September of 1928 that after fifty-six years in business, the F. B. Williams Cypress Company had exhausted its supply of cypress. The company had run through all of its land holdings and could no longer feed the mill with the volumes remaining. The giant mill in Patterson sawed up its last log at 9 p.m. on September 12, signaling the end of an era and the collapse of the Louisiana cypress industry. Within a few years, all of the large sawmills closed, leaving only a handful of smaller facilities and independent loggers to handle the limited volumes that remained.

“Williams reached its last economically viable tree, and that tree was cut, it was floated out to the bayou, boomed up, brought to the mill, and that marked the end of the logging operation. The milling operation, because of the inventory of logs that were in storage, took another three to four years to complete, and that included the sawing of the lumber, the drying of the lumber. And the last board of cypress lumber was loaded out of Patterson, Louisiana, on a railroad car in 1934 and shipped out, and that was the end of the end of the F.B. Williams cypress lumber logging and lumbering business.” -Rudy Sparks

As fate would have it, R. N. Downman died in 1928, followed a year later by F. B. Williams. The passing of these two stalwarts of the industry brought a swift end to their Louisiana cypress dynasties.

At that point, the owners of Williams liquidated the various companies, including St. Bernard Cypress Company, and transferred all of the remaining assets into a new entity, Williams, Inc. From then on, Williams functioned as a landholding company that generated income primarily from oil and gas development. “We sold the last board of lumber that we produced in 1934, and in April of 1934, we granted our first mineral lease in the Chacahoula Field to Sun Oil Company,” Sparks said. “Six months later, we granted a much larger lease covering about 29,000 acres of land to Shell Oil Company in August of 1934. That was the beginning of the mineral exploration and development activities on Williams’ properties that continue to this day, albeit in decline.”[18]

[18] Sparks interview.

After closing its mill operations, Jeanerette Lumber & Shingle, like other major cypress companies, followed a similar path as Williams and began leasing swamplands to oil and gas companies in the early 1930s. From that point, the harvesting of timber in the swamps shifted to the smaller contractors, such as May Brothers, Joy and Laws Timber, Kyle Lumber, and Norman-Breaux. For example, in 1932, Jeanerette Lumber & Shingle agreed to sell all of its remaining timber to Joy and Laws Timber Company. It signed a long-term contract whereby Joy and Laws agreed to remove all the remaining tupelo and cypress in Cross Bayou, Bayou Sorrel, Big Forks, and Lake Verret areas, “so as to completely clear the lands of its saw log timber during the six-year period of the contract.”[19] Jeanerette Lumber still owned about twenty million board feet of tupelo and four million board feet of cypress in these swamps, but the glory days of the cypress industry had come and gone. Black gold soon replaced the “wood eternal” as the prime revenue stream for these companies.

[19] Iberia Parish Clerk of Court, Conveyance #47865.

These mop-up operations continued until about the mid-1950s, when virtually all of the remaining second growth commercial trees in the basin had been cut. Louisiana’s last cypress mill, owned by the Louisiana Cypress Lumber Company, closed in 1956.

The scars left behind by the logging companies can still be seen in the swamps themselves. The extensive network of logging canals, along with the pullboat lanes and railway skidder runs in the basin, induced changes to water quality, habitat, and wildlife. The spoilbanks of the logging canals created elevated areas that were naturally regenerated by oak and ash trees providing a critical diversity of habitat. These higher ridges gave refuge for wildlife from the rising water levels in the basin after the floodway was completed.

Beginning in the 1940s, the federal government, through the efforts of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, began constructing levees and floodgates around the periphery of the basin to create the Atchafalaya Floodway. This engineered system was designed to safely handle the overflow of a major Mississippi River flooding event, similar to the historic flood of 1927 that nearly destroyed New Orleans and other major populated areas. Known as the Mississippi River and Tributaries (MR&T) project, this herculean engineering effort required a portion of the daily flow of the Mississippi River be diverted into the Atchafalaya River. This increase flow of freshwater has permanently filled in parts of the Atchafalaya Basin with sediment and overloaded the natural system.

As early as 1940, a delta began to form in Grand Lake (see image below), as a result of the increase sediment flows into the basin. Within a few decades, the entire Grand Lake—from where most of the giant rafts of cypress logs were once collected—had almost completely filled in. Forests now exist where this massive lake once stood. Many of numerous waterways, including the dredged canals, have been filling in as well. 

Since the development of the floodway, the hydrology of the basin has been completely altered. “Once we did that, we started seeing, particularly by about 1970, a decline in these forests on the subtle elevated ridges in the Atchafalaya Basin, as well as these other swamps,” Sparks stated. “Because all of this swamp, this coastal forest, is interlaced with a massive system of streams and bayous that all meander in and out of the system, but once it reaches a certain age, it cannot adapt to that permanent type of flooding. So, you start seeing the cumulative effect of that, and it started expressing itself about twenty years ago in the cypress-tupelo. It’s too wet. It’s flooded on a permanent basis. These trees cannot tolerate that. They adapted and evolved in a system where the water pulsed in and out.”[20]

[20] Sparks interview.

On a scenic boating trip through the basin today, one can observe these historical changes at play. There are very few mature, healthy cypress trees left. The younger trees are somewhat deformed; their growth stunted by changing environmental conditions. There are however a few stands located on the edges of lakes and coves that resemble the old-growth cypress trees. In places like Lake Dautrieve, Lake Fausse Point, and Grand Avoille Cove—just on the perimeter of the levee system—one can still see these old relics of the past. “Those are the old-growth trees,” Sparks confirmed, “and most of those were passed over because they had some type of defect. They were either partially hollow or something, because rarely do you see an old-growth cypress that is solid. Most all, if not all, are hollow on the inside, and that’s why they were left, because they were not commercially viable. So, we get a little peek into what these trees look liked 100 years ago or 150 years ago.”[21]

[21] Sparks interview.

Harold Schoeffler, who has spent a lifetime in the basin fishing, canoeing, and studying its unique traits and habitat, is one of the few experts who actually aged some of these old trees. “We aged ten trees,” said Scheoffler, “five in Lake Dauterive and five in Lake Fausse Pointe, and we didn’t know whether we had the oldest, but of the ten trees, five of them were older than 1,500 years…. So, it would be safe to say that we have living trees in the Basin that were alive when Christ walked on Earth.”[22]

[22] Interview with Harold Schoeffler by Jason P. Theriot, April 21, 2021.

"We have a duty to our descendants to save some of that beauty.” -Harold Schoeffler