Albany, LA
County: Livingston
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30°30’12 N 90°35’02 W
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
Established: October 7, 1953
Disestablished:
Comments: Albany is a village in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 1088 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Statistical Area.
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Remarks: The settlement was established in 1896 by Hungarians, under the name Árpádhon (Árpád, the leader of the Hungarian tribes and -hon as home(land)). According to another source, Albany was named from the Natalbany River, a name which is of Native American origin.
Alma, LA
County: Pointe Coupee
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30°35′47″N 91°23′22″W / 30.59639°N 91.38944°W / 30.59639
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
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Comments: Alma was the name of a community located in southeastern Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, United States. The community was located east of Lakeland.
Remains: The community was located on land once owned by Pointe Coupee’s celebrated philanthropist, Julien Poydras. The original Alma Plantation House was constructed in 1789 along the banks of False River.
Current Status: The area is currently home to Pointe Coupee Parish’s only operating sugar mill, Alma Plantation. Alma is one of only 11 sugar mills still operating in the state of Louisiana. It produces raw sugar and blackstrap molasses. During the harvesting of sugar cane, known locally as “the grinding season”, Alma Plantation becomes one of the area’s largest employers. Sugar cane is brought to this mill for processing from a number of surrounding parishes.
Remarks: After the death of Poydras, David Barrow, a member of one of Louisiana’s most prominent families, purchased the property. In 1938, Alma Plantations’s 13-ton locomotive, “Dixie” was sold off to the Mississippi River Sugar Belt Railroad. The Alma Plantation home is no longer open to the public, but the sugar mill and a country store are open to visitors.
Anchor, LA
County: Pointe Coupee
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30°41′01″N 91°21′18″W / 30.68361°N 91.35500°W / 30.68361
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
Established: 1888
Disestablished: 1930
Comments: Anchor was the name of a community located in southeastern Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, United States. The community was located along the Mississippi River, north of the Pointe Coupee – West Baton Rouge Parish line.
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Current Status: The community received its name during the American Civil War. A post office was established in the community in 1888. The post office was closed in 1930.
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Burrwood, LA
County: Plaquemines
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 28°58′05″N 89°22′39″W / 28.96806°N 89.37750°W / 28.96806
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Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
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Comments: Burrwood was a community located near the far south end of the delta of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, United States.
Remains: Burrwood was established and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers on Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River to serve as a base for dredging operations, jetty work, and other activities required to maintain navigable conditions along this channel.
Current Status: During the 1950s, Burrwood was a forward area weather/hurricane station manned by the United States Weather Bureau. There was a row of officer houses for the families, a barracks complex for the unmarried men, and a two-room schoolhouse for the children of the people who manned the station, as well as local fishermen who lived nearby.
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Cheniere Caminada, LA
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Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
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East Krotz Springs, LA
County: Pointe Coupee
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30°32′12.87″N 91°44′24.59″W / 30.5369083°N 91.7401639°W / 30.5369083 -91.7401639
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
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Comments: East Krotz Springs is a ghost town that was located in Pointe Coupee Parish’s 1st Ward, approximately 12 miles west of Livonia, Louisiana, United States.
Remains: East Krotz Springs was originally known as Latania and was the site of lumbering operations in the early 1900s. The Atchafalaya River levee broke at Latania in 1912 and 1913, flooding the southern part of Pointe Coupee Parish. Since 1939, this area has been located within the Morganza Spillway levee system and was entirely underwater again when the floodgates at the Morganza control structure to the northeast were opened in 1973 and 2011 to allow for relief of the high water level on the Mississippi River. East Krotz Springs is subject to being flooded again if the control structure gates are ever opened.
Current Status: The site of the town itself is located at coordinates 30°32’12.87″N, 91°44’24.59″W, and is abandoned. United States Geological Survey maps from 1948 show the town to be located on the east bank of the Atchafalaya River at the mouth of Bayou Sherman, directly across from Krotz Springs, south of the railroad bridge.
Remarks: There is no visible trace of the town left today.
Elliot City, LA
County: Pointe Coupee
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30°33′22″N 91°39′55″W / 30.55611°N 91.66528°W / 30.55611 -91.66528
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
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Comments: Elliot City is a ghost town that was located in Pointe Coupee Parish’s 10th Ward, approximately 6 miles west of Livonia, Louisiana United States.
Remains: Elliot City was flooded in 1912 and 1913 due to breaks in the Atchafalaya River levee at Latania (now East Krotz Springs) to the west, from the backwater of the Torras crevasse on the Mississippi River in 1912 and the McCrea crevasse on the Atchafalaya in 1927. Elliot City was abandoned in 1939 when its residents were forced to leave due to the construction of the Morganza Spillway.
Current Status: The site of the town itself is located at coordinates 30.55614N, 91.66520W, and is covered or partially covered by the current U.S. Route 190 roadway.
Remarks: This area is inside the floodway levee system and was entirely underwater when the floodway gates at the Morganza control structure were opened in 1973 and 2011 to relieve the high water level of the Mississippi River. The area is subject to being flooded if the control structure gates are ever opened again. The Elliot City area is a short distance south, southwest of a now inactive U.S. Army Air Corps bombing range used as a training area for aircraft based at Harding Army Air Field in Baton Rouge during World War II.
False River, LA
County: Pointe Coupee
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30° 34′ 14 N, 91° 35′ 34 W
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
Established: 1858
Disestablished:
Comments: False River was an unincorporated community located in southern Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, United States.
Remains: In February 1858 a post office was established in the small community known as False River; however, it was short-lived. Less than three years later, the post office was closed. During the Civil War, the area was used as an encampment for Union troops. In 1887, the post office was re-opened as “St. Mary’s, Louisiana.”
Current Status: It was situated near present-day New Roads and the current lake of False River.
Remarks: Public debate over the town’s name caused the name to be changed to New Roads in 1888. The town was incorporated in 1894 as New Roads. The spelling of the town’s name was sometimes written as “New Rhodes” in early maps and publications.
La Balize, LA
County: Plaquemines
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 29°07′21″N 89°06′26″W / 29.12250°N 89.10722°W / 29.12250 -89.10722 1744
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
Established: 1721
Disestablished: 1860
Comments: La Balize, Louisiana, was a French fort and settlement near the mouth of the Mississippi River, in what later became Plaquemines Parish. The village’s name (also spelled La Balise) meant “seamark.” La Balize was historically and economically important for overseeing the river.
Remains: 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.
Current Status: Last traces washed away in a hurricane on September 13, 1865
Remarks: 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 of New Orleans through the shifting passages, currents, and sandbars of the 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.
Laurel Valley Village, LA
County:
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 29°48’23 N 90°46’18 W
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
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Comments: Laurel Valley Sugar Plantation is located in Thibodaux, Louisiana. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Remains: The plantation was owned by Joseph Tucker, a Virginian, who bought more than 50,000 acres of land along Bayou Lafourche. The earliest structures on the property date to the 1830s. It was at one time the largest producer of sugar in Lafourche Parish, and a mill was built on the property for this purpose. As many as 135 slaves lived and worked on the property prior to the Civil War. While the main house built by Tucker was destroyed during the Civil War, shotgun houses and Creole cabins remain on the property.
Current Status: The mill stopped production in the 1930s, and sustained significant damage during Hurricane Betsy in 1965. It is named after where it is located.
Remarks: With over fifty original structures remaining it is the largest surviving 19th- and 20th-century sugar plantation complex left in the United States and is still a working sugarcane farm. The general store on the property is open to the public, displaying tools and farm implements used in the cultivation of sugar cane as well as locally made arts and crafts. Laurel Valley was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 24, 1978.
Morrisonville, LA
County: Iberville
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30° 19′ 20 N, 91° 13′ 29 W
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
Established: 1870s
Disestablished: Residents were relocated in 1990
Comments: Morrisonville was a small town in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, that was contaminated with industrial pollution from a nearby Dow Chemical Company vinyl chloride factory.
Remains: The town’s residents – predominantly African American – were relocated in 1990 to Morrisonville Estates in Iberville Parish and Morrisonville Acres in West Baton Rouge Parish by Dow. The community had been founded during the 1870s by former slaves freed from a plantation near Plaquemine.
Current Status: A chemical factory producing vinyl chloride was set up on land adjoining the community by the Dow Chemical Company in 1958. Initially, there was a green belt separating the factory from the town, but the plant bought land from the town in 1959 and then expanded to cover 1,400 acres (5.7 km2), filling all the intervening space, so much so that the plant’s loudspeaker announcements could be heard inside people’s houses.
Remarks: In the 1980s and 1990s, chemical pollution was discovered in the town’s wells. To avoid lawsuits, Dow decided to buy up the town and move its residents away to create a buffer zone around the factory. In 1989, just before the release of a federal report into toxic emissions from the factory, Dow announced that it was going to buy up all the homes and land in Morrisonville and that if the residents refused their property would be worthless.
Peason, LA
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Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
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Red River Landing, LA
County: Pointe Coupee
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30° 57′ 34 N, 91° 39′ 54 W
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
Established: 1836
Disestablished:
Comments: Red River Landing was the name of a community located in northern Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, United States. The community was located near the Red River and the Mississippi River.
Remains: In 1836, a post office was established at Red River Point in northern Pointe Coupee Parish. This area was once a major economic point and the transfer point for all immigration and mail. Before the advent of the railroads, daily stages ran from this community to Shreveport, Louisiana. However, after the old railroad bridge collapsed, the once-thriving community began to decline steadily. In 1902, the post office was changed to Torras, after Joseph Torras, whose son-in-law, N. P. Phillips, founded the area.
Current Status: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains a river-monitoring gauge at this location.
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Ruddock, LA
County: St. John The Baptist
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30°12′16″N 90°25′30″W / 30.20444°N 90.42500°W / 30.20444
Elevation: 3 ft (0.9 m)
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
Established: 1892
Disestablished: Hurricane in 1915 destroyed the town.
Comments: Ruddock is a ghost town in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, United States. Ruddock was located on an isthmus between Lake Maurepas and Lake Pontchartrain, 10 miles (16 km) north-northeast of LaPlace.
Remains: In 1892, William Burton and C. H. Ruddock founded the Ruddock Cypress Company. They constructed a sawmill and a town to serve their business; the town became Ruddock. In 1902, the sawmill burned down and was later rebuilt. By 1910, the town had a population of 700.
Current Status: Although the town was destroyed by a hurricane in 1915, it is still signed as an exit on Interstate 55 and marked on Louisiana state highway maps, as of 2011.
Remarks: In September 1915, the 1915 New Orleans Hurricane hit Ruddock, destroying the town and killing 58 residents of Ruddock and the nearby town of Frenier. Ruddock has since become overgrown by vegetation, and all that remains of the settlement is rotted wood from the buildings.
Sherburne, LA
County: Pointe Coupee
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30° 30′ 54 N, 91° 43′ 8 W
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
Established: 1880s
Disestablished: Abandoned the early 1900s
Comments: Sherburne is a ghost town located in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, the United States in the Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge.
Remains: Sherburne was founded as a logging camp and sawmill town in the 1880s on the Atchafalaya River in the Atchafalaya Basin using the abundant trees in the region.
Current Status: It is unknown how many residents there were and the town was abandoned in the early 1900s after the last of the trees were cut down. By the 1930s the final trees were cut down and the town was permanently abandoned.
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Taft, LA
County: St. Charles
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 29°59′29″N 90°26′53″W / 29.99139°N 90.44806°W / 29.99139 -90.44806
Elevation: 13 ft (4.0 m)
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
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Comments: Taft is a census-designated place (CDP) in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, United States, on the west bank of the Mississippi River. According to the 2000 census, Taft had a total population of zero.
Remains: This place is the location of a phosphate mining facility owned by IMC-Agrico, the Union Carbide Taft/Star Petrochemical Plant, which produces a variety of organic chemicals such as acrolein, Acrylic acid, and acetaldehyde, and part of the Waterford Nuclear Generating Station owned by Entergy Corporation.
Current Status: Taft was the original site of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church, which served Taft, Killona, and Hahnville. The church was built in 1877, and in 1963, it moved to Hahnville. The cemetery is still in Taft and is still used as a burial ground by the church.
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Torras, LA
County: Pointe Coupee
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30° 59′ 23 N, 91° 40′ 44 W
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
Established:
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Comments: Torras is the name of a former town in the extreme northeastern corner of Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, United States. The town was located along either side of the Texas & Pacific Railroad at its juncture with Lower Old River. The Mississippi River is located just to the east and the juncture of the Red and Atchafalaya Rivers just to the west.
Remains: The community was founded in 1902 and named after pioneer area planter Joseph Torras. Joseph Torras was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1820. He immigrated to the United States as a young man. Before settling in Pointe Coupee in 1845, he had lived in Natchez, Mississippi and Van Buren, Arkansas. He and his brother purchased the plantation of Bennet Barton Simmes and opened the firm of M & J Torras.
Current Status: The town of Torras was expected to develop into an important shipping and rail center, due to its excellent location. Disaster struck, however, on May 1, 1912, when the levee in front of the town gave way during the great Mississippi River flood of that year. The community was virtually destroyed as the floodwaters poured south through Pointe Coupee Parish as well as into West Baton Rouge, Iberville, and Assumption Parishes. Some 17,000 residents of Pointe Coupee were forced from their homes and at least 28 persons drowned, principally in the Lettsworth, Batchelor, and Erwinwille communities to the south of Torras.
Remarks: The community of Torras was moderately rebuilt and withstood the high water of the Great Flood of 1927 when a levee break occurred nearby at the McCrea community on the east bank of the Atchafalaya River. With the relocation of the railroad in later years, however, the community of Torras ceased to exist and there are no buildings left to mark its former location.
Waterloo, LA
County: Pointe Coupee
Zip Code:
Latitude / Longitude: 30° 41′ 41 N, 91° 21′ 26 W
Elevation:
Time Zone: Central (CST) (UTC-6)
Established: 1820
Disestablished:
Comments: Waterloo is the name of a former town at the upriver juncture of the False River oxbow on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, United States. Founded circa 1820, the community grew as a bustling export center for cotton and sugar cane produced in Pointe Coupee Parish.
Remains: For protection against the frequent floods of the Mississippi River, Waterloo was surrounded by levees, the large state-maintained levee in the rear, and a small levee maintained by the community itself at the river’s edge. Both of these levees broke during the flood of 1884, seriously damaging Waterloo and the smaller communities of Anchor and Cook’s Landing immediately downriver. What the river did not destroy, arsonists did during the mid-1890s and there is nothing left to indicate that the town once existed.
Current Status: Most of the families who lived at Waterloo moved to the parish seat of New Roads, just a few miles to the west on False River.
Remarks: The names Waterloo, Anchor, and Cook’s Landing is perpetuated, however, in the street names of nearby subdivisions of new homes developed between 1968 and 2007. It is also not uncommon for residents of these subdivisions to uncover remnants of the communities while performing any sort of excavation upon their properties. There are 144 households, in which there is an estimated population of 332. The racial makeup of the neighborhood is 93.05% White non-Hispanic, 6.25% African American, and 0.6% Latino. The median income is estimated at $71,232. The median house age is 19 years.
