Rice farming became the mainstay of our prairies after the railroad cut across them in 1880. Southern Pacific shipped 2 million pounds of south Louisiana rice to New Orleans in 1886. Those shipments grew to 200 million pounds over the next decade, and that was just the beginning. All of that rice needed more water than our rivers and streams could provide, and that brought big trouble in the Mermentau basin in the early 1900s.
By 1900 farmers and canal companies were using thousands and thousands of gallons of water from the Mermentau River for irrigation, but in 1901 and 1902, two of the driest years ever in southwest Louisiana, water in the river dropped so low that there was barely enough to irrigate the fields — and even that little bit could not be relied on because salt water creeping from the Gulf made it unusable for crops.
As a result, a group of farmers and canal operators formed the Rice Irrigation and Improvement Association to build a makeshift dam to block the salt water near Grand Chenier. When they could not raise enough money for something permanent, the group did what such groups naturally do. It went to the legislature for help. The association did not get anything directly from the state, but the legislature created the Mermentau Levee Board and gave it authority to charge a property tax to build something better…