lost louisiana is supported by the louisiana department of culture recreation and tourism through artistic support libraries museums state parks and historic areas we're preserving and promoting our cultural heritage lost louisiana is also made possible by the support of viewers like you somewhere around here the atchafalaya river begins but no one can point to the exact spot you could say it's where the red river grazes the for now immovable mississippi and ricochet south but this molasses colored beauty is picking up speed and leaving the red rivers meandering ways in the north louisiana dust pace its brisk march to the gulf and you'll see the etchaffalaya for real i'm jeff duae this is not a history not a biography of the river but a simple journey this is our trip down and along and running aside one of louisiana's great cultural streams you and i are out for another of our road trips in search of lost louisiana rivers run deep this is the echapolio flowing by here the stream is still called the red river but if the cajuns had their own empire this would be ultimate thule the northernmost border post up near marksville for the confederates it was literally an outpost fort derussy is now a state historic area but all that remains are graves and splinters of a time when it stood against northern invaders today a poignant gesture will help to reconstruct the memory of this little-known outpost today a louisiana hero is coming home louis derussi the man for whom the fort was named was buried in knackfish originally the cemetery in which he was buried has since been abandoned legends of buried gold in the cemetery and as a result it's highly vandalized the graves are constantly dug in all of the tombstones have been stolen and when we saw the condition of the general's grave we decided he would be better honored buried here at the fort that bears his name we got a court order we spoke to families of the member members of the family and we had him disinterred by archaeologists from northwestern state university the results were the funeral you saw here today steve mayu has come to pay his respects to general derussi and to detail the man's life so we won't forget him as the case and slowly return the general it's striking to see which flag drapes his coffin if anything this controversial we might also reflect the service is not for us but for him louis derussi was the oldest west point graduate to serve in the confederate army he was a major general in the louisiana state militia he served in the war of 1812 the mexican war and the civil war which is the equivalent of somebody today who had served or somebody not long ago who had served in world war one world war ii in vietnam he was a pay master at fort jessup just outside of natchez and uh he also paid for towson up in oklahoma further up the red river and one time while bringing the payroll up to fort towson in 1842 the steamboat sank he lost the payroll and as a result he was uh canned from the army uh he went into his engineering career when the mexican war broke out he volunteered and went to mexico as a colonel of a louisiana regiment when the civil war broke out once again he volunteered and was a colonel of a louisiana infantry regiment that went up to virginia in virginia uh he found his brother his older brother at fortress monroe right across the lines from him and the two brothers would not fight each other so lewis came back to louisiana and they had himself sent to california celebrants in remarkable numbers are here they throw hands full of dirt to his honor after so much war in his life general derussi will rest in peace on the northern edge of cajun louisiana you and i must make hay now by plunging south if we follow this link of confused stream into simsport the feel of the old self can overwhelm creaky and dusty are the paths an amazing icon of high cotton is on sale north of town someone is working on it it seems a symbol of hospitality beckons a new family a symbol of homestead beckons us to stop and wonder how much the realtor would ask simsport is a fishing town now but the steamboats once made it an important trading post on the atchafalaya that was before the railroads at four corners seafood they buy and skin and sell what the a chaffelaia fishermen catch chris i need a 30-pound alligator gar go get one please we buy catfish sell sell fish any kind of fish just about retail wholesale some about 90 percent of our catfish comes from the chapala we get some from mississippi and some from the toledo bend area comes in and you say you get one day you got 10 000 pounds at one time one day our biggest take in was what at ten thousand where in the world did it go i know that the little people assumed well we're at the time we're doing a little wholesale but now we completely quit the wholesale our retail business was so good we just started doing strictly retail it's obvious we know but still pleasant to ponder that traditions of commerce in this river town are not yet lost people are living making a living the same way that they've always lived here that's most of your people here that's all they know like a lot of you men that they've never done anything else commercial fishing is getting that whole way of life well it's a good lifestyle yeah yep you can make some money fishing the echapalaya still can't you oh yeah do you know what you're doing it's dangerous and it's hard work but there's money to be made it was called a mississippi river six foot one inches long 121 pounds and my boyfriend caught it and he rode around with it on top of the van for about a day and a half my real father mounted it james munson you know it's so huge it doesn't really even look real right now everybody thinks it was artificial we got 88 pounds of meat out of it it's what come out of it it weighed 120 pounds and after we cleaned it we got 88 pounds of meat this simsport landmark seems the right size and shape to be very old curious it is and as so often happens in our lost louisiana search just when we want a better look someone's curious about us where are you folks from yep that's my store all right retired policemen and retired taxidermist first a post office for the town of simsport then in the early 1900s it was converted into the first bank of stem sport and later there on around the 70s i bought the property and converted it into what is was a taxidermy shop i hope you don't tear it down mr dupont i don't plan to i just plan to uh fix it up a bit dupont didn't remember at first how old his tiny landmark is we pressed him to find out and for a peek inside this is the washing machine he used to clean pelts and it wears good too it's better with with the washer than by hand i bet i don't use it too often but this was your taxidermy shop yes it was and that's the type of heat i used to use in an old wood heater that's quite all by itself i see you looking and this is a of course i've had i've had some uh i worked on which was much bigger than this but i like this one because of the the form of it you know it's pretty nice it's perfect as you can see and i just decided to keep it until i get uh something to mount it on that would uh do it justice do it justice there you go 1840 not on the national register of historic places but for anyone searching for the real louisiana it's a landmark all the same in simsport just planned to uh fix it up a bit i hope you don't fix it up too much is the site of an important civil war struggle the battle of yellow bayou wedging themselves in a long thick cane breaks the rebels attacked the army of union general nathaniel banks the yankee intent on taking shreveport as we cross the avoid saint landry parish line we'll veer away from miles of farmland to palmetto this antebellum town was settled by a group of freed blacks on land owned by one of their number named prevost redo an old store is another intrigue buddins is the remaining general store in this town it's closed for the evening but our luck is working overtime again we here sure i'll show you around starting with the tin ceiling jeff i'd like to show you my father's store that he opened in 1934 that's what it says outside yes there's a lot of history here it's it hasn't changed too very much we've tried to keep the old i love the tin ceiling yes we do too i think it's been painted once once in the many years that it's been here this is just an old-time hardware store we have all your dishes your housewares plumbing your nails your all your pvc pipe over here my brother works on chainsaws over here and lawn mowers and things we have all your nuts and bolts and laura budden all good is daughter of the founder who was also the first postmaster and the first to set up a cotton gin this is the last of seven stores in palmetto laura figures when people got cars they spent less locally of the maybe 400 people in palmetto many still do shop here for that we are glad this is our where we keep our charge accounts all of our customers that have charge accounts with us have a slot like on paper on paper handwritten and these are current oh you're still using it yes yes we have about um 400 customers in this and you're still keeping your credit your charge account that way it's local people right right on hand in these old stores there's usually a supply of old things that just never did sell laura keeps someone else out of towners who happened by it's coveralls i mean but no wait no no it's not coveralls what is it yeah you used to wear it over your shoulder and you go through the cotton fields and you pick cotton that was your cotton sack i didn't i i never i didn't know they were that long this is a short one this one's only four let's see this one's only four and a half feet they came i think as long as eight feet can you guess what this is that's a colossal what's a castle what's that it's always a draw it's an underwear [Music] for it i love this this is men's summer dvds and this little button back here for convenience i fit in that neat there's very few people knew what this was when i was a little girl our house was connected to the store the section of the store back there was our house three bedroom house living room dining room kitchen and we attended school right across the street we had so far to go that we just crossed the street and during recess as a little girl i would always come over here to get my little snack at recess daddy put us to work we had to help the other students and check them out so as growing up we always had food food food anything we wanted and uh but daddy made us work when you came in the store if there was work to be done he was you were expected to help out and growing up in little palmetto was a good growing up oh yes wonderful wonderful there was once a tiny ferry across the atchafalaya at melville louisiana's powerful governor huey long the story goes didn't like the political support he got from melville and drew the roads to ignore this town there is still a tiny ferry there's only a railroad bridge south of here highway 190 crosses the river at crop springs for the cars but you can still cross here on the two-car ferry captain vincent bandy has worked on this river for 18 years true or false the atchafalaya is a very calm river oh that's false it's calm when it's real real low but uh when it gets hot it gets a lot of current swift a lot of logs and drifts coming down it's it's a bad real you can tell when it comes up right there by that bridge you can hear it from right here from when uh it comes up by that railroad bridge right there you can hear the sound of the river going around those piles and it's pretty bad it's a simple arrangement the ferry mostly stays on the melville side only when someone has need does it make the trip we pick them up and go straight across the rail we don't have no schedule they can have a hundred people pull up i can pick up one person right here go to that side drop him off if another one pulls up we come right back pick him up drop him off another one can pull up we'll pick him up go right back drop him off no schedule on demand that's how the people like it that's how we run the melville ferry takes us to the east bank of the atchafalaya here miles of sugarcane dominate the horizon here and there families make their place along the farms and bayous the river is getting low in this central louisiana heat before our journey is over it will cause us trouble for now there's another side of lost louisiana even you and i may have ignored the man made replaces the natural and maybe we too often see only our handiwork while we're busy looking for endangered landmarks have we forgotten there are even more fragile balances in nature richard pace is hunting for bear one of his best tools is a ladder because bears often make their dens in old trees sometimes very tall hollowed out old trees sack get your stuff ready [Music] pace is an lsu wildlife biologist specializing in bears what they eat where they live especially how they breathe really difficult to work her to get her out he wants to know how many bears live along this stretch of that i talk about bears it's only the females that really matter as long as there's just a few males that go around to complete the seed so to speak we're going to a den tree this bear isn't a this is a broken off tree bob this is the morganza spillway here in tennsaw parish and throughout the atchafalaya basin his team of researchers travel miles of woods and swamps looking for bears [Music] they'd also like to find young cubs up close they look like little baby pigs but hold one and you'll know they're formidable bears there's an unusual fondness people have for bears from teddy roosevelt to yogi we think of them as cuddly and holding one you can understand why but for researchers here along the atchafalaya that is an unfortunate factor in wildlife biology we talk of charismatic megafauna you know big critters that that people tend to gravitate towards the three cubs in the tree it turns out are females try to keep their eyes out of the direct sunlight okay this is our first set of triplets i think with all of your research what do you think are these three little ones uh chances of surviving of you uh well they're they're pretty good uh the the uh we're at an edge here where uh the woods start to get more and more fragmented as you go north from here but as you go south from here it's pretty solid timberlands and we're inside the morganza spillway governmental restrictions on on conversion of timberland's help or at least will afford these bears a good chance to make it a normal life span the louisiana black bear is a threatened subspecies that's not as bad as endangered but with more research this team may have a better handle on how threatened our louisiana black bear really is the rate at which bears die and the rate at which bears are born that's much more important to when we're or a biologist when we're trying to you know examine the potential for the long-term survival for a species with more information at hand about the bears researchers and conservationists could have a better chance of helping them kind of goes without saying right lost louisiana rivers run deep our journey along the atchafalaya will continue butte larose and dusay's store and washitaria and car wash the basin's version of a strip mall there's been a dusay store here for about 70 years but this is the new one south of interstate 10 as long as you stay close to the great chaffalaia basin the houses look more like fishing camps and many are named the permanent icons are here too alongside polka dotted clapboards and deutleros we were told of a spring-fed lake as clear as glass where the alligators slipped between dead cypress roots and the wind was always calm cow island it's called and cow island lake is where we wanted to go the trouble is you need a boat we met jimmy and karen noel they have a boat butler rose has a boat launch i have the nerve to ask equation solved no we can't we can't we better cut across in the front over there this has got one is a river how about what's that i don't know yet until we get there i have no idea how much water we got in there we're gonna do it a little while south on the way around cow island jimmy noel was worried we wouldn't have enough water to ford through to the interior lake that the stream to get into it would be too low for his boat then what was surely a bad sign appeared a poor alligator wrong side up and crossing our path he swore up oh yeah he's rotted he's right you're fixing a bus that happens a lot over here they get tonight during lunch then they got to make alone they can't come up he's been dead for a while don't smell too good true to his experience jimmy was right about the stream to cow island lake we'd have to walk right here i think we'll need you to walk through there i'm gonna be hard walking through there as the egg hatching season for alligators approached and as we had just recently been so impressed by even a dead one we tread lightly to cow island the luck had simply run out a weir prevented any access to the fabled spring lake and a retreat was the only option after just a minute enjoying this great unspoiled wilderness [Music] sometimes when we go looking for some specific lost louisiana we find something else just as nice onto bro bridge not too far from the river and surely a must see there don't seem to be any records of when the first bridge was built across bayou tesh at brobridge in the 1766 spanish census this place was called la puente to indicate a turn here in the bayou in any event in the civil war the bridge here either the first or the second built was intentionally destroyed by the folks who built it you see the federal troops were coming into town and the rebels were forced to flee up the tesh to appaloosas they were taking on supplies at the very last minute before the yankee occupation from four steamboats there was the darby the louise the blue hammock and the uncle tom leaving behind only a few snipers to harass the invaders the rebels all escaped the bridge did not escape destruction its flames could be seen for miles around by utech as a last desperate symbol of southern independence this is the sort of place where kids still lay down their bikes to buy a pop at an old store it's the sort of place where locals and visitors lucky enough to stumble in sit for long lunches this is the cafe des amis and its genuine charm fits well into our expectation of a cajun town it wouldn't take a lunch hour to feel the genuine romance of brobridge brokerage is not a put on for the tourist not a put on at all it seems to know its way just fine picturesque st martinville on the town's busiest corner kathy gerami has recently opened a sprawling restaurant where a dry goods store post office and bakery all had once operated our luck was back this afternoon she and raymond a bear were sitting around after work ready to talk about this town well louis saint martinville's probably the fourth oldest community in louisiana and uh it was an old trading post a tacopaw trading post it was incorporated in the early 1800s but the history goes back much further than that the acadians arrived here after their expulsion in 1755 and the the church directly behind you is the oldest church in the diocese of lafayette which would include everything sort of west of the mississippi river to the texas border south of alexandria that parish was established in 1765 the church building that you see was actually built in 1844 that particular church building not only were the acadians settled here actually before the acadians were settled here there was a very affluent um french culture that was here in fact many of the land grants that were given were given to the the french aristocrats that were here in the early 1700s so there's a lot of definite french influence a lot of the old french names which is very different from the acadian names and the european aspect of the church being in the middle of the of course is very attractive to not only our american visitors but to our european visitors as well trying to get back on the river's course the levees will keep you at bay no matter on the way to lake falls point state park lots of people pass by and some stop at tim robinson's concrete yard art stand during crawfish season you got your crawfish man awful lot of them going by here getting into the basin area so right now they're doing some crabs i think but it's so dry oh it's so dry right now yeah but you're getting now the water is dropping down once it gets down into two three foot area and the bass and all that start running so he makes the concrete molds himself and makes some money selling to the visitors on their way to the park they pretty much have to pass by he came from illinois to live in louisiana his wife sue had once read a book on us and always wanted to visit now he says he wouldn't live anywhere else wish i had to come down here when i left home the first time when i'm 14. tell me why really uh the people the the just the the the whole uh area is you know it's uh it's not rush rush rush people are friendly there's no way to rush to around they're on these parts no not really people are good hearted you know two weeks ago robinson was left with babies to watch a mama cat abandoned her kittens at first they weren't doing well and one was bitten by a snake but recovered they're about five weeks five to six weeks old right now yeah they're about half what they saw they really shouldn't be i think they're gonna make it now they're just getting starting to eat some good food now so hopefully they'll make it maybe keep some of the mice down he says he doesn't know what to do with them but i have a feeling he does he'll keep taking care of them until they can do for themselves well that being the case mr robinson we glad you joined us down here in louisiana approaching the gulf now and the spanish moss is hanging long pull into generetta as early as you can any morning to smell the fresh french bread at lejeune's bakery established get this 1884. the red light tells you when the bread's hot it stays on most of the day actually rita and alvin landry keep some loaves on the warm oven into the afternoon ms rita says just about every day this boy's grandfather sends him in to get a loaf it's really good there's no better bread than legends bakery french bread jizzy cake and hot dog bun yeah garlic bread and then they're gonna start making cookies just getting ready for that alvin landry admits to baking ginger cakes every morning for only 58 years he says 58 but to my calculation it's about almost 65. i've been in here 58. he's 76 and he's been here since a young boy when i first started here i was a gingerbread lady i got hired as a gingerbread lady to work with him just cut roll and cut and put him in the pans put him up on the right and help him back like you saw what we did today but now we got two new helpers so they they're helping their grandson pancho helps out with the ginger cakes as well some are wrapped and sold in area stores rj knob is a snack supplier this product is just phenomenal you know everybody that buys it is in love with you that's good we have people coming from wake alaska canada and you name it they hear about it in the little brochures that they sent out and they'll come and show it to us that's what they heard about and they have to come and get legends bay and that's all they talk about people like to see the old way of doing things huh a lot of them will come in with their cameras take pictures with their families and pictures of me sometime too but sometimes i hide behind a brain patterson now and coming into morgan city this is a unique place where you can park your tugboat right at the back door tugboat jerry does just that he's a tugboat captain he's also a country music singer he calls to ear the musical stylings of ernest tubb it goes like this [Music] yes i know i've been [Music] hurt you untrue and through but please have mercy on this heart of mine and take me back and try me one more time it's a lonely world when you're all alone and there's no one to share every sorrow and care there's no one to greet you at the close of the day the sunshine may come in your heart but never there [Music] they buy my tapes wherever i go my caps and all that and uh they all come up to me and tell me how they love during this tub you know his fans and wherever i go i think i'm collecting his fans and they become chuckle jerry fans [Music] tugboat jerry also carves his favorite country music stars on matchsticks and then i got chris gustafson over here and toothpicks okay this one's dolly parton right porter wagner lil jimmy dickens hank williams thanks very good you did the hat very well well thank you minnie pearl and then uh roy cuff ernest tubb hank snow jimmy c newman grandpa jones ralph emery before he uh cut his beard off yeah and then john connolly with the rose colored glasses oh exactly yeah and down here is kathy baker this is all a hee-haw gang kathy baker lulu gordy tap and i can't remember this girl's name but she was married to roy uh let's see kenny rogers okay that's the hager twins yeah uh this is one of the girls on hee haw buck owens roy clark missed hiro archie campbell lisa todd uh junior samples vr 549. you know uh ronnie stallman good friend of mine what's great is the dog and the dog blue uh i forgot his name blue where's string bean mcpole string paint i had him in there i had him here next to dolly parton and uh moving it around it broke off and fell and i never could find him anymore oh that's terrific the miniature masterpieces are meticulously painted with expressions and detail tugboat jerry sometimes makes a calling card with them to meet country stars he's already met and is friends with dozens as his scrapbook will attest how do you do this and he has a life-size statue of his favorite female country singer out back and i'm redoing it now because he's been in the shed a long time and every time dolly parton makes changes i got to make some changes on the statue so uh you keep up with him yeah i started working on it again i sanded the head down a little bit the hair and uh got to redo everything and paint it up and and would and tugboat tell me what this is all about well when i carved uh the statue on a as i'm working on a pipeline and this guy picked up the cypress tree and i started carving dolly parton and then when i got to the top it started getting narrow so it was getting too narrow for uh top heavy dolly right the cypress knee was not dolly shaped right right so what i did this was the other uh the original but when i was at a festival one time this big bust girl told me brought to my attention it was wrong it was wrong so i i agreed with it so after the festival was over i come home and cut this part off and i extended the hand and uh then i got busy with other things and didn't finish it ernest tubb always was my favorite male singer yeah and dolly was always my the female thing that i really admired and she was so pretty she always reminded me of a brand new tugboat pushing two barges that's pretty good tugboat's wife martha takes care of the business and promotion angles for tugboat jerry she's a little shyer than the country star she married tugboat jerry has a bus with the slogan of his act painted on the side in patterson we asked tugboat for a few bars of a river song to get us on our way on the final leg of the atchafalaya and found he does a pretty good job with johnny cash too well i taught the weeping willow how to cry and i showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky and the tears have cried for that woman on the flood you big river i'm going to sit right here until i die yoda [Music] old stores fading signs disappearing landmarks and finally art and music of some of the people you'd find along the atchafalaya river you might expect that we would end our journey here in morgan city as we head toward the gulf but even here where the water is sometimes indistinguishable from the land's end we can find perhaps one more story in our search for lost louisiana if we'll just listen carefully enough among the soft winds and sweep of small waves across eel jean charles there's another timeless sound it's wencesla billiard building a boat i don't know i don't like the fiberglass but i like to build my own get something uh i rather build something my own then buyer buy a fiberglass even if it's higher even it's twice the higher the price i'll let it build my own you need to be stand down needless to say his plans exist only in his head needless to say he learned to shape wood some 50 years ago at 72 wencesla billiard is needless to say one of a vanishing breed a man who places importance on doing things himself doing things right even if it takes a longer time even if it is harder a lot of people move away when they get old enough they move from here not the old people yeah no billiard built his house and an uncounted number of these unusual p rogues they have a curved bottom most cajun's gifts are flat bottom but his are bowed the better to slip over the muddy marsh bottom you can go in the mud which you can you can slide that in the middle yeah you slide sideways too yeah again this is going this way and it's going right this way is that better yeah to make it turn to turn around then if you got flat bottom you're going stuck then you won't be able to turn nowhere around it's slick yeah it's sticking down it's the sport car model that bow in his boat lets it slip free it's a better design if you'll wander all the way down the atchafalaya and over to il de jean charles you'll understand the value in taking your time down here there's a lot of time to understand that some people say oh you put too many too much snail in there when you want to break that it don't all come out by piece i did i didn't build that the break yes i'll build up their stick that's right that's about what you'll see along the chaff elia in a day or so what remains of this day is a sigh that louisiana can hold so many simple wonders [Music] um [Music] um you