La Balize, Louisiana was a French

fort A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

and settlement near the mouth of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it ...

, in what later became

Plaquemines Parish Plaquemines Parish (; French: ''Paroisse de Plaquemine'', Louisiana French: ''Paroisse des Plaquemines'', es, Parroquia de Caquis) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 23,515 at the 2020 census, the pari ...

. The village's name (also spelled La Balise) meant "seamark." La Balize was historically and economically important for overseeing the river. It was rebuilt several times because of hurricane damage. The active delta lobe of the river's mouth is called the Balize Delta, after the settlement, or the Birdfoot Delta, because of its shape. La Balize was inhabited chiefly by fishermen, river pilots, and their families. The pilots were critical to helping ships navigate to and from the

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as ...

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

river's delta front. The village was vulnerable to seasonal hurricanes. Washed away in a hurricane of 1740, the village was rebuilt on the newly emerged island of San Carlos. That village in turn was damaged severely several times and finally destroyed. By 1853 also called Pilotsville, the village of La Balize was rebuilt about five miles (8 km) to the northwest in the Southwest Pass, on the west bank of the Mississippi. That village was taken down by wind and a storm surge of the September 14–15 hurricane of 1860. La Balize was abandoned, and a new pilots' settlement was constructed about five miles (8 km) upriver on the east bank of the Mississippi, just above the

Head of the Passes Head of Passes is where the main stem of the Mississippi River branches off into three distinct directions at its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico: Southwest Pass (west), Pass A Loutre (east) and South Pass (centre). They are part of the "Bird's Fo ...

. The new village was named

Pilottown Pilottown (or Pilot Town) is an unincorporated community in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, United States. It serves as a base for river pilots to guide ships across the bar and up and down the Mississippi River. "CRPPA: Pilottown" (overview), ...

History

When the explorer Robert de La Salle claimed the land in 1682 for the French crown, he identified this site near the mouth of the Mississippi as important. It was at a point just above two major forks in the river, so passage could be controlled. A map drawn about 1720 showed the mouth of the Mississippi with the different forks of the river, and the isle and fort of La Balize. By 1721, the French had constructed a -high wooden pyramid as ''la balize'' at the settlement. It sat relatively high above the mud and marshes of the delta wetlands. Die Balize an der Mündung des Missisippi crop

Die Balize an der Mündung des Missisippi crop

By 1722 the center of the French colony was in New Orleans. In the early 18th century, the Roman Catholic Church quickly established seven pioneer parishes in the Louisiana colony, among them the parish at La Balize, founded in 1722. The French also founded four pioneer parishes in early villages of what are now Mississippi and Alabama. After the establishment of La Balize, the King commissioned Nicolas Godefroy Barbin to serve as the "Garde Magazin" (chief administrator) there. That commission, signed in 1703 by the King and his minister

Jérôme Phélypeaux Jérôme Phélypeaux (March 1674 – 8 February 1747), ''comte de'' (count of) Pontchartrain, was a French statesman, son of Louis Phélypeaux. He served as a councillor to the parlement of Paris from 1692, and served with his father as Secre ...

comte de Pontchartrain, was significant in that it recognized the strategic importance of La Balize. Despite the vulnerability of the low-lying site to hurricanes, the French and later the Spanish needed to control the mouth of the Mississippi and have a place where pilots could meet the ships. They always rebuilt. The complicated conditions on the Mississippi River required ships to have river pilots to help them navigate the bar, with its changing currents, mud and sandbars, and avoid going aground. After the Americans took control of the territory by the

Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or app ...

in 1803, they sometimes called the village Pilotsville. With the advent of steam tugboats in the 19th century, the pilots had more power to maneuver oceangoing ships in the river. Not only did hurricanes destroy the settlements, but engineers started working early to try to improve entry at the river mouth. In 1726 French engineers dragged an iron harrow through sandbanks to make it easier for ships to pass the bar. Other elements which pilots and captains had to deal with at the mouth of the Mississippi were changing passages. The main ship passage changed four times before 1888. In 1750, the main passage was at the

Northeast Pass The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

(part of ''Pass á Loutre''), then in succession it was at

Southeast Pass The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

(also in Pass á Loutre), Southwest Pass, and South Pass. The main ship passage is again in the Southwest Pass. Historical records for La Balize documented the long struggle of the French, Spanish and Americans to maintain this critical site at the delta front: *1740 - La Balize was destroyed in a hurricane. A new island arose which was called San Carlos. The village was built again on San Carlos. *October 7–10, 1778 - La Balize was destroyed, but was rebuilt at this location. *July 25–28, 1819 - Ships anchored near La Balize suffered through a 24-hour gale, but only three were grounded. *1831 - La Balize suffered major damage. *April 3–4, 1846 - This was the most damaging storm since that of 1831. It was a hurricane-like storm but likely not of tropical origins, given the time of year. It cut a new channel between Cat Island and its lighthouse ZacharyTaylorMonmouthBalize

*By 1853 La Balize had been relocated to the Southwest Pass, where it was built on the western bank about five miles (8 km) northwest of its first location. *September 15–16, 1855 - At Cat Island the lighthouse keeper's house was destroyed and the lighthouse imperiled. Almost everything else was swept away in the

storm surge A storm surge, storm flood, tidal surge, or storm tide is a coastal flood or tsunami-like phenomenon of rising water commonly associated with low-pressure weather systems, such as cyclones. It is measured as the rise in water level above the ...

. *August 11, 1860 - In the first hurricane of the season, trees were uprooted and up to of water flooded the region of La Balize. *September 14–15, 1860 - The second hurricane struck at the mouth of the Mississippi and destroyed La Balize. Tides were six feet above the high-water mark. The village was abandoned and rebuilt upriver at what became Pilottown. *October 2–3, 1860 - In the third hurricane of the season, there was widespread damage as far inland as

Baton Rouge Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of countie ...

. *September 13, 1865 - Although La Balize had been abandoned since 1860, this hurricane destroyed the last traces of the village. The hurricanes of 1860 persuaded the pilots and their families to rebuild further upriver, which they did about five miles (8 km) away, on the east bank of the Mississippi. The new settlement was named

. At its peak of population in the 19th century, it had about 800 residents. A school for children operated into the 20th century. Today the pilots usually stay there only temporarily for work shifts. Little of La Balize remains today. In the early 20th century, only a rusted iron tomb marking the site remained.

Literature

Travelers found the Mississippi delta an astonishing area. In her ''Domestic Manners of the Americans'' (1833),

Fanny Trollope Frances Milton Trollope, also known as Fanny Trollope (10 March 1779 – 6 October 1863), was an English novelist who wrote as Mrs. Trollope or Mrs. Frances Trollope. Her book, ''Domestic Manners of the Americans'' (1832), observations from a t ...

captured her first perceptions as her ship entered the area of the river:

Large flights of pelicans were seen standing upon the long masses of mud which rose above the surface of the waters, and a pilot came to guide us over the bar, long before any other indication of land was visible. I never beheld a scene so utterly desolate as this entrance of the Mississippi. Had
Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His '' Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ...
seen it, he might have drawn images of another Bolgia from its horrors.
One only object rears itself above the eddying waters; this is the mast of a vessel long since wrecked in attempting to cross the bar, and it still stands, a dismal witness of the destruction that has been, and a boding prophet of that which is to come.
By degrees bulrushes of enormous growth become visible, and a few more miles of mud brought us within sight of a cluster of huts called the Balize, by far the most miserable station that I ever saw made the dwelling of man, but I was told that many families of pilots and fishermen lived there.

Élisée Reclus Jacques Élisée Reclus (; 15 March 18304 July 1905) was a French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork, ''La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes'' ("Universal Geography"), over a period of ...

, a young Frenchman who later became a renowned

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

and

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessari ...

, recounted his trip up the Mississippi in early 1853, on his way to work as a tutor for a planter cousin:Élisée Reclus, "Fragment of a Voyage to Louisiana", 185

accessed 7 May 2008

Thanks to the speed of the
tugboat A tugboat or tug is a marine vessel that manoeuvres other vessels by pushing or pulling them, with direct contact or a tow line. These boats typically tug ships in circumstances where they cannot or should not move under their own power, su ...
, we advanced rapidly. I folded all my newspapers and stopped thinking about
Sebastopol Sevastopol (; uk, Севасто́поль, Sevastópolʹ, ; gkm, Σεβαστούπολις, Sevastoúpolis, ; crh, Акъя́р, Aqyár, ), sometimes written Sebastopol, is the largest city in Crimea, and a major port on the Black Sea ...
Reclus was reading news about the port of Sebastopol, as it was then spelled, because the French sent a ship there during tensions with
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...
prior to the outbreak of the
Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included t ...
in 1854. to observe the appearance of the Southwest Pass, the main mouth of the Mississippi, in all its details. Several miles in front of the ship, a long, thin black line seemed to extend across the sea like an immense
jetty A jetty is a structure that projects from land out into water. A jetty may serve as a breakwater, as a walkway, or both; or, in pairs, as a means of constricting a channel. The term derives from the French word ', "thrown", signifying somet ...
. Beyond this dark line, the river appeared like a great white silk ribbon, then came another black line parallel to the first, and farther away the blue waters of the sea stretched out to the grey curve of the horizon. The Mississippi resembled a canal advancing toward the open sea between two long jetties, and the 40 or 50 ships, whose tapered masts we saw standing out vaguely against the sky, completed the picture. It is a spectacle that some day will be witnessed, on a much reduced scale, at the Suez Canal planned for the waters of the
Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on th ...
.

There, Reclus described his impression of the village of la Balize:

The village of Pilotsville, whose plank shacks are built on the left bank
f the Mississippi River F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''. Hi ...
is generally known by the name of Balize. In reality, this name belongs to another village founded by French settlers on the southeast pass, but since the southwest pass has become the main mouth of the Mississippi, the pilots have transported both their industry and the name of their miserable village there. There are certainly few places in the world that look as sad and desolate as la Balize. The narrow strip of earth where the houses are grouped is at the same time the shore of the river and that of the sea; the salty waves and the swells of freshwater cover it in turn and meet each other there in a labyrinth of ditches filled with a viscous and corrupted mixture; everywhere a bulge of the spongy earth allows plants to attach their roots, wild canes and reeds grow there in impenetrable thickets. The shacks are made of planks that are as light as possible in order that they not sink in the soaked ground, and, so that the moisture can penetrate them less, they are perched on high stilts as if on perches. Also, when the storm wind blows and the waves of the sea come one after another tumbling into the river over the offshore bar, the houses of la Balize could well be swept away if they were not moored like ships; sometimes even the village comes to drag on its anchors. Fevers and death emerge incessantly from the blanket of miasmas spread out over la Balize. Yet, four hundred Americans have the courage to perch in these shacks and sleep off their fever there, in the hope of being able to rob passing ships.

Notes

References

{{authority control Mississippi River Louisiana (New France) Pre-statehood history of Louisiana Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans Ghost towns in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana Populated coastal places in Louisiana Geography of the New Orleans metropolitan area

History

Literature

See also

Notes

References