Today, Broussard is the bustling crossroad of Lafayette Parish, transporting people and goods along the U.S. 90 corridor amid waves of neighborhoods, shops, industrial sites and farm land.
But 100 years ago, it was all sugar cane.
Martial Billeaud planted his first crop in 1866, 25 years after his family immigrated to Louisiana from France. He worked as a blacksmith before enlisting in the Louisiana 26th Infantry during the Civil War and turned his attention to agricultural concerns after the war — beginning with cotton and corn before transitioning to sugar cane and building a sugar mill.
The enterprise proved profitable, helped by the arrival of the railroad, and by 1893, Billeaud Sugar Factory had grown to a large, modern concern that would shape the area for generations to come…