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 by my side the old cowboy song says do not hasten to bid me it's time to remember the red river valley to remember why it's hard to leave the side of its soft waters i'm jeff duae six miles north of here is arkansas this bridge is louisiana highway 2. beneath it the red river flows quiet and low it's come from the foothills past texas through arkansas and now it's heading south with the red river at low volume its bachelor lands in north louisiana can look something like the surface of mars a deep red and just as serene from here we continue our search for lost louisiana from here we begin a trilogy of journeys down our great streams rivers run deep this is the red a stone's throw east is plain dealing a most western feeling small town in the tradition of what we expect of the old west wide streets bright dry old bricks and the slow charm of another prettier time edna clark retired to plane dealing to become the town barber this barber shop has been here for years and years uh i know of four people that's had it i think i was probably the fifth one that took you still got the reindeer straps on that uh barbie chair it's an old-timey barber shop in a small town nothing fancy the river is just uh like six seven mile out to the red river that we want to go fishing and then you got plain dealing lake that uh we can fish out there also well we don't have a lot of the hustle and bustle in this community as you do in a big city does it look sort of like an old western town you've got the dentist down the block yeah you've got a cafe on the corner you have a barber shop here you know what i'm saying just the basics are here and you really do because of the way it's laid out see our general store was there 90 years before it got burned down at the giles cafe there's a plate lunch every day today it's chicken and dumplings leon sanders has been mayor for 40 years he's just retired from his city duties but is still here every day well i think people uh who live here and surrounding area now when we say plane dealing we're not talking about just those people who live within the corporate limits of the town i like to refer to all the people of north boulder parish as being from plain dealing because plain lily is a central portion of the town and at one time the roads every road leading out of plane dealing was lined with family farms and the children grew up there and came to school in plain kneeling that doesn't exist anymore such there are no family farms but back in the days gone by that was that was it and plain eating was a central uh shopping area of of north georgia parish every building you see around here in this town was filled with a business of some kind well you know i see a lot of different buildings and and we go to a lot of different small towns and you have probably two dozen old buildings right in the middle of town that are still standing is the good part well these these buildings at one time were all occupied by businesses that supplied the people of the north boise parish area with their needs their stores they they would come to play in the shop on saturday afternoon i have laughed many times as a kid i stood on the sidewalk out there and watched the people one afternoon this is a a a matter of this little personal thing that that takes place two guys uh got in an argument one of them says hey i paid the last fine this time i'm gonna pay i'm not gonna pay another fine this time for fighting let's go outside of town to fight they took off right now there and they walked a half mile out to the corporate limits of the town and they fought and i as a kid didn't follow him but a bunch of the guys did follow them and watch the fight when they got through fighting fist fight they walked back to town it's all over no guns no knives just but this guy made the statement i pay the last fine i'm going to pay i'm not going to pay another five for fighting in this town let's go out of town to fight and they fought with a fist sanders used to have the big mercantile in plain dealing and we had come to see it but in our search for lost louisiana things don't always work out it burned down about a month before we got here the old store that had been made into a town museum is a pile of bricks no more than a great sad gap in a downtown that's magnificently preserved if not terribly prosperous looking and it's so sad to see the old mayor just walking up and down and walking through it and looking and hitting ashes you know and he had so much history in there and then of course you had your other businesses the lady that had the photographer has moved to vent and i understand and all it's building back is the hardware store sam walton's a great man he was smart he did what a lot of guys tried to do and failed but he ruined middletown there's no question about it uh when he started established walmart because that killed uh the little towns people who used to drive as i say from all of north boulder parish into plane dealing to visit shop and fight fight you bet just down the road a piece in rocky mount some men got together five months before fort sumter a month before south carolina seceded from the yankees the men of bossier got together and pledged their sacred trust to each other in their declaration of independence it was november 26 1860 and this became the free parish of berger as much as any place that tries to lay claim to it this is the cradle of the confederacy here rebels first stood up to walk away in a few years they would know the price there are even older dignities in the towns of this north country not far is minden sanctuary for another people yearning to breathe free [Music] this is germantown colony one of the first german settlements in america a group of germans left germany for the purpose of worshiping as their pleas their leader was count leon he believed they'd be a second coming of christ and he wanted to be the one to welcome him then they left there and came to grand decor louisiana at nagatosh where the log jam stopped and yellow fever struck and that's where so many died with yellow fever so did the camp so the counties knew this was his place of coming he was looking for a place as near like jerusalem this is the same latitude as the jerusalem she came on here she helped to call him together to 18 and 71 when her daughter's married and she joined them and went to hot springs arkansas florence krauss has lived here for more than 55 years her husband's family is of the original lineage to a colony that flourished here until the civil war ruined the economy and doomed their way of life grandparents came from germany and settled here raised their family here there was 11 children in my husband's family a recent restoration effort spearheaded by descendants of the colony lets you drift through their countess's home to see the old piano where she taught lessons in music and propriety to young ladies [Music] the community kitchen is still here as is the barn and smith works the german settlers form equipment tells of long days and an ethic retained near their new rhine the red but we really shouldn't stray too far from the river's trail we'll crisscross it many times on our way south and for now take the west bank to gilliam the early settlement of caddo parish was hampered by a great raft of logs jammed across the red river from bank to bank but small paths were cut through the floating blockage and a bachelor settled here r.l gilliam wanted his name to live on but he had no children he granted the railroad passage through his new land if they would build a depot they did it was named for him and stayed busy as the only stop between texarkana and shreveport just down river on the western side is belcher also named for a man who granted the railroad right of way in the earliest years of the 20th century a belcher farmer wanted to dig a well he kept hitting salt water at 400 feet and any school child around here knows the rest of that story the farmer gave up he wanted cool water not hot oil and gas it was a boom in more ways than louisiana's upper red river were already prosperous by the 19 teens when gas hit big in the river frontage of old shreveport pioneers jazz men and can can dancers drank the night away this is where folk music legend hudi ledbetter sang his blues in the rolling wake of the red river there's a feel of all those years of river commerce not something you can put a finger on just an easy picture that lets the mind reel out something you remember about keel boats and steamers on a stretch of highway through bossier city the remnants of old nightclubs call to mind recent years of tawdry commerce the motels and fancy juke joints of the 1960s litter your path with great architectural icons of crazy nights and weekend passes from barksdale air force base this is a route 66 in five blocks [Music] we've tried to tame the river that's the human history of the red our applied desire to ride a rattlesnake of changing courses and unpredictable depths shreveport and bossier are proud to be river towns ever since the great log jam was broken chopped drugged dragged sank pulled lifted and punctured in the 1830s by crews led by captain henry miller shreve gary joyner is a historian and red river scholar at lsu in shreveport the raft was like a living breathing thing it moved the southern end kept on breaking off because it just rotted due to its own weight and the northern end was building at one point the raft was 400 miles long by the time shreve gets here it's down to about 110 miles just about a hundred yards north from where we are is one of his more famous cuts that created shreve island he did it in a day he cut a ditch one foot deep one foot wide from daylight to dark opened the northern end and by the next morning steamboats could go through it shreveport was the confederate capital of louisiana for so much more than that it would have been a great prize for the union to seize the river proved a lifeline from moving supplies from the west to the rest of the confederacy and here 31 ironclad or tin-clad battleships were built by 1864 there are only four targets worth taking according to the union high command in all of the south and that's richmond charleston mobile and shreveport shreveport was really important because it was the safest of the four it was insulated it was far away from everything it was the capital of confederate louisiana it was the center for the army of the trans-mississippi and new orleans was under siege already by then new orleans union hands it's gone militarily uh you have industry growing up here you have cattle moving in here it is the bread basket that's feeding those armies and napoleon said an army marches on its stomach we found recently that part of the problem with this campaign is that banks was using a french-based map porter's using a spanish-based map his show the roads banks do not banks river pilot was a second licensed river pilot after henry shreve on the river his name was wellington w withenbury and he leased several thousand acres of cotton land right around in here and his cotton had been harvested and was ready to come down and he didn't want the yankees to steal it he didn't want the rebels to burn it and so he tells banks you know there's a very fine road heading due west and it goes from natchez and it goes to a little place that no longer exists as a viable town crumps corners and then moves up what is today highway 175 to pleasant hill from there to mansfield and from there you can come into shreveport from the southwest and the rebels will not be looking for you and he believes it and he's right the road exists porter's saying give me three days the biggest ambush you've ever seen is down that road exactly and he meets his match at mansfield on april 8th and then during the retreat he has a tactical tie and a strategic loss because of a retreat at pleasant hill and comes back to grand decor where they pull up porter is fighting his way back south he's having all kinds of problems the confederates are firing at him snipers are at him his boats do not move well in reverse anchors are coming loose rudders are coming loose ropes are popping off and and in fact he loses his largest ship the eastport trying to get south of grand decor eastport was taken out by a mine that was made in shreveport and laid by the crew if not the boat and maybe the boat of an ironclad missouri that was built here so it did get some action although we never we never think about it stories of the war and its aftermath are best illustrated by a walk along the red in 1873 the people of caddo and bossier parishes were so fed up with so-called reconstruction rule that they tried to join texas [Music] reenactors visit pivotal sites of the red river campaign every year they come to feel what you can't put your finger on a lonely wanting call from the red you see the red is unspoiled by this century things are pretty much as they were when the blues and grays fought for it the war was over but the ramifications of the war goes on history follows the individual history follows us today and we don't have a clear and correct understanding of that history how we ever know where we are going remember jefferson davis president of the confederacy warned us that if we the south lost the war for southern independence our children would be taught southern history by the conquering yankee walter kennedy and gary stevens wear the uniform of the confederate soldier for battle recreations they want people to remember the good and honorable part of a time when men and women fought and died for their beliefs alone to live in hearts we leave behind is not to die constancy is a powerful thing there's something about the red river it's easy on the eyes on the senses on the imagination once you face a little history something you can't quite put your finger on lingers in its silent absolutely relentless passage south lost louisiana rivers run deep the red valley and a search for lost louisiana rivers run deep this is the red these are the small towns and fine landmarks we have ignored for too long [Music] there are two old courthouses in nakatish one from 1940 features art deco indians just next door is a still older one think turn of the century on the second floor of nakadish's older courthouse you'll find a library of genealogy materials from birth records to real courtroom dramas well this is a court order it's dated friday morning the 20th of august 1790. the court met and it was a state of north carolina plaintiff against the defendant who was convicted for horse stealing and therefore ordered that the said alliance be confined in the public hillary for one hour is that all i thought they hung horse thieves well they were liberal and naked-ish huh well you also got to let him go he got a public gripping oh he got a public whipping well i would hope so there are many abandoned stores on the east bank of the red south of nakatish this one was built holding up the porch with well drilling bits you probably wouldn't notice them unless you're looking do we notice anymore the faded signs the rusted plows the incredible links to our past that litter this land amazement can be found by the side of the road in bermuda one corner one mass of unpainted wood one hunk of disappointment regret for what shakespeare said beauty is also in that which survives it's moments like these that i'm really glad you're with us on these tours of lost louisiana because this looks and feels exactly like it must have felt a thousand years ago when the cushita were hunting and fishing here it's a small bridge on highway 1220 try to find it on the map over by you with theo this is what the tourism folks like to put on their posters and brochures of course some of us here have a tendency to think that maybe we shouldn't that maybe we'd get more yankee invaders that way this time as tourists as we head downstream the kane river is a reminder of how many times even since europeans arrived here how many times the red has changed its mind try and hug the red on a drive down the smallest of paths the cane will deceive you it was once the red but it's cast off now the roads get smaller and hug the banks even tighter then they back into some mighty small corners these are places seen only by the people who live here cotton bales dry tall in the right fields just as it seems they always have it's time for the harvest and the fields are white unto harvest somewhere among the dry cotton and spiderweb thin farm roads is a little town dampened by the kane river and its many bayous cluchyville in this area a woman from missouri set some stories that are now called some of america's finest literature kate chopin poured out unpopular honesty about women's lives in louisiana after the war this is the landscape she drew on as inspiration the old french settlements of the 1870s stories about the ruined lives of creoles after the war there were acres of open land cultivated in a slovenly fashion but so rich that cotton and corn and wheat and cocoa grass grew rampant the negro quarters were at the far end of this open stretch and consisted of a long row of old and very crippled cabins [Music] directly back of these a dense wood grew and held much mystery of a witchery of sound and shadow and strange lights from the sun shone of a gin house there was left scarcely a trace though kate chopin lived along the kane river for only three years this place remained in her memory and she remains in ours for documenting life in this area more than a century ago the rochelle cemetery is a fine old one of course there are a lot of fine old cemeteries along the red but how many from so far back are still growing the grave of e.j valliere has ceramic knobs on the gate and they're frozen shut and it is very much off the beaten path there are times trying to follow the red that you can come up against the limitations of smaller roads backtrack you must but that's all right because you could see something you missed on the way in like a bridge an old hidden bridge in the woods that tells you there's an even older road paralleling your journey and lost somewhere in those woods across the red again to montgomery and another cemetery inside of the river this one is on a steep hill from here you can see the exact spot in the river where the east port sank it was a union iron clad and it's still out there on the sandy bottom montgomery looks like a tiny town today of course it wasn't built for today it's the exact size of a red river trading town of the last century the width of the streets the style of the buildings let you see the last century montgomery may still seem to be something of a small town but before the civil war this was a big shipping port in fact union general nathaniel banks when he's taking his campaign of northern aggression as they called it up through confederate north louisiana well after he shells the town of montgomery he personally gets out and leads a raiding party to first loot then burn every house in town at least the local people got a good laugh a little later when union admiral porter was making his hasty retreat south on the red he tried to save his precious ironclad the eastport but couldn't and instead of letting it fall into rebel hands porter scuttled his own boat right here at montgomery let me tell you a story about the town of colfax a wealthy cotton planter named meredith calhoun owned 14 000 acres along the red river and he also owned 1 000 slaves but we're going to get to them in a second now he made his homestead along something called the regulate the bondu the bayou of a good or just god now the red river in one of its flood stages as its want to do in one of its fits and twist took over the course of the regulate the bond turning calhoun's homestead into calhoun's landing the place became very popular now fast forward through the war for southern independence and into reconstruction the leaders of that new south wind up naming this parish after president of the union ulysses s grant they named the town after grant's vice president shuler colfax there was just a lot of bad sentiment around here in reconstruction about 300 blacks remember these are probably most of them recently freed blacks they start a ruckus a lot of white people are killed you can imagine what's coming up the posses the vigilantes this town is on the verge of blowing when the white establishment in the outside world gets wind of what's going on in colfax boy they head up themselves a posse maybe some whiskey's passed around certainly the vigilantes get together overpower the guards that are keeping some of the blacks under control the whites round up about 40 blacks they take him to a tree all mass they're hanging there was a norman rockwellian gas station in colfax the last time we came through we took these pictures this time we came through and it was gone we want to grab pictures of the old landmarks before they're all gone sometimes ugly new things get in the way of a good photograph don't worry senator smith we stuck it back in the post holes look at this old hotel it's a shame only to bemoan the outcast state of the landmarks we take for granted this time colfax will not fool us we're going inside before it's gone too can i look in some of these i don't have the keys somebody didn't return their key john lesage used to run that old gas station they tore down his family owned the hotel look at it 1902 and the second one built on this spot you could see the river from the front windows before they put in that levee you know from this parlor i'll bet a lot of businessmen and travelers had a beautiful view of the river right here the river was right down there jail it cost 8 500 to build a hotel and 2500 for the furniture my goodness do you remember how much it was to stay here at night oh no no see the uh the bidders came from red rubble yeah you know the steamboats and the businessmen and the traders and when they had courts you just came up and stayed maybe for a month you know and then went back to eric and you all know where the baton rouge where they came from this was once a prosperous town well no not then not those days no no no no it was had an old cotton house over there and the old bank building over there and just a few other structures in the house and that was there they operated on the you know on the rubble and then when the railroad came through that locked and then when the highway came through i think about 19 10 or 12 well then that really finished it john lesage has a sad take on it all he says he recognizes he won't be here much longer to take care of the hotel he now lives in he told me he's the last guest thank you mr lesage for talking with us come and sit by my side if you love me [Music] [Music] river valley [Music] across the river again we go to an abandoned stretch of road called old highway one the only way to travel the path of the river was until a few years ago highway one a two lane from arkansas to grand isle imagine what you'd find along a road called old highway one rayford knight had a paper box at his home near zimmerman north of boyce the local boys had little else to do that's the story here about every time they'd get wound up good on that stuff you know they had to take my paper box down and put a little addition to it put the wings on it you know and put the seat on it and all this other snort and snapping everything you mean the boys around here added to it because they were they were taunting you enough to they wrote that much about me and they'd steal it and go modify it and bring it back the next day or two and everything worked out pretty good hasn't anybody put anything new on it lately um oh well i'm gonna have to come by some night and put something new on it i'll put your propeller on it they call this area barrett you know near timber trails and lee heights we followed the course of the river as closely as possible of course for most of the time you can't see the water for the levee and then there are the times you mistakenly think you can get to alexandria from here farmer bobby smith helped with directions and just as we're leaving he casually mentions that old abandoned tiroli graveyard yes what do we have right over here that they claim is a old cemetery that the people who used to work at a sawmill this used to be a little sawmill uh town and they were buried over there when they worked here the sawmill cut out around 1900 or 1905 or something like that but there really isn't anybody around anymore who really knows the town of tyroli right or that anybody lived and breathed here really right that's exactly right but there's still that cemetery in the pecan trees right not a remnant remains of the town of tyroli the river's changed course so many times over the years sometimes when you go looking for lost louisiana you don't find it there is redemption from the sins of our forgetting or letting things be washed away to weed the night has cooled the red but now the central louisiana sun is misting it up again dawn in alexandria is as pretty a town's awakening as any imaginable old bridges rise from the mist the red pours from its bed like someone's dropped in dry ice we'll stop into just one home built at the dawn of this area's european history this is kent house now a state historic area amy dufour helps preserve it mr bio received a spanish land grant about 1796 that consisted of 500 acres and so that's what he started off with he was married at that time started building the house the kent house that it's called today and it wasn't completed until 1800 and in fact something interesting at that time is that for each child that a couple had they could petition the government for additional land and the bios uh had 14 children on this weekend there was a family reunion of the descendants of the bayou family arden trifly remembers hearing the stories of this pioneer home from ants and such since she was a little girl i remember my grandmother's sisters all talking about burying things during the civil war so they wouldn't be stolen that's one of my only biased stories i'm afraid but that's such a classic southern story it is what did they bury silver and china mostly silverware i believe the most valuable things maybe some jewelry are they certain they dug it all up oh yes they got it all back got it all back it was saved the europeans came here to stay in the earliest years of the 18th century our next stop along the red is a visit with more recent transplants sacred heart elementary lies on the northern frontier of catholic south louisiana this is morrowville near marksville for 50 years this has been the louisiana home town of the sisters of our lady of sorrows they teach children the alphabet and a love of jesus christ in this state 30 sisters of the order are from india mexico the philippines texas six from louisiana and 50 years ago 14 young nuns from italy began a history here of serving god by serving the least of his people in 1947 sister martina bernabe came to morrowville to teach four black children you know people would come in and they would come to see us like we were strange people coming from the other planet and we all were there but since our english was limited we just listened and without our really understanding of what what they were saying and uh to you we were just saying this if when people would come to visit us we would sing a song for them sister martina remembers post-war italy the country was shattered ill duchess the fascist mussolini had been hung the ruins of rome ruined moreover the marshall plan and truman doctrines would help rebuild europe there was no such plan for poor black kids sister mary bachely says she had always wanted to be a missionary in a poor country do you remember thinking about where you were going and what kind of place this was louisiana well i was interested so i'm nice we have some lesson in english lessons and then i i study on the the history the geography but since i was young i want to be a missionary i want to go work with the black children the young nuns did not know what poor country they would serve as missionaries it was all happenstance or of course the will of god how they would end up in louisiana a chance meeting after the war between the bishop of alexandria and a vatican emissary bishop charles greco asked for some nuns to teach in central louisiana sister helen marcanton was among the first to come by boat to america by train to alexandria by bus tomorrowville 14 days in transit so we arrive in alex reindeer on the 23rd of october 13 days after you left italy yes and so we and then there they met us some clergyman and a friend that they said they were speaking tell you some ladies but they would not really speak italian we could not understand anything they were talking about they said we're going to eat you we're going to dress you and all this thing but we could not really make anything up their original facility for handicapped children was in clarks here they are moving to a larger one capable of housing more students older people around here tell stories of the little italian nuns who came to serve 50 years ago how they rode bicycles at first how they were always busy some things change as the schools get larger but they're still always busy is this sort of dedication soon to be lost in louisiana sadly the numbers are dire in america from a high of 180 000 a generation ago the number of nuns is down to 90 000 and the median age is nearly 70 years old at a celebration mass the sisters of our lady of sorrows were showered with gratitude from former students and the people of central louisiana yet the current bishop of alexandria paused only briefly to thank them after 50 years on the job he asked them to do more the rest of us might think that callous ungrateful but the sisters by their vows are not the rest of us are they the sisters came here today praying for the same thing they always do a deeper calling to the greatest work serving god by serving the least of his people the people around here were kind of poor but they were good and kind and generous and as they still are good and generous to us they always appreciated what we did for them my dream came true i wanted to be a missionary and i want to died over here doing god's work yes and that is the end of our journey for now but there are many more river stories to tell in our next searches for lost louisiana you and i will visit two other beautiful streams the red disbands itself east of here at a place called three rivers it becomes the atchafalaya and contributes even to the mississippi in our journey we've found the red river contributes quite a bit more to all of louisiana [Music] [Music] uh you