Irrigating Calcasieu rice fields with Red River water

Everyone was astounded when Wellman Bradford, “the well-known civil engineer,” unveiled his plan to turn southwest Louisiana into “the Eden of the world in productiveness and wealth.”
“The project is so gigantic, what it means so near fabulous, that it halts at the brink of the mind, before it can find lodgment there,” the St. Landry Clarion proclaimed on Aug. 3, 1912. “But that it is practicable is admitted on all hands. That it has the financial backing was absolutely demonstrated.”
Bradford had decent credentials. He had recently returned to his native south Louisiana after a stint as “chief of the irrigation department of Brazil,” and was “a gentleman recognized throughout the country as eminent in his profession.”
In August 1912, he’d just appeared before the Louisiana Tax Commission asking for support of his proposal to take water from the Red River and bring it “through a system of canals and bayous, down through Rapides and St. Landry parishes, and then … through the great prairies of southwest Louisiana.”
He said the canals and other works would cost from $12 million to $15 million, but that it would “irrigate from 500,000 to 1,000,000 acres of land now unproductive, and … provide electric power at the rate of 30,000 horse-power every twenty-four hours, at designated points, from which the rice millers could operate their plants and other enterprises.”
Perhaps even more important, the flow of water from the Red River would “revive vast districts of rice lands” by pushing back salt water from the Gulf of Mexico that had been creeping up the Mermentau and other streams, making their water useless for rice irrigation.
The proposed canal would be 275 to 300 feet wide and 25 feet deep, which would be large enough to carry barge traffic from the Red River through south Louisiana and to the Gulf.
What became known as Bradford’s Canal would leave the Red River at Natchitoches, “swing inland to the border of the highlands, and then parallel the Red River down to a point near Alexandria.” Then, “still hugging the edge of the high prairie” it would cut through St. Landry Parish. From there a branch would drop south into Bayou Teche “and the main canal would swing west across Evangeline into Calcasieu … to a point north of Lake Charles, and then turn south, emptying into the Intracoastal Canal.” Yet another branch would tie into the Mermentau.
The canal would also have the capability of draining some of the water out of the Red River during times of flood.
“The proposition, coming absolutely unheralded, astounded the commission by its magnitude and it created a favorable impression,” according to the newspaper report. “The mammoth concern can be completed in five years, thinks Mr. Bradford, and the capital necessary is assured. Some of the biggest capitalists, including John C. Calhoun, organizer of the Southern Railway, are interested in the move.”
There was huge enthusiasm across south Louisiana when Bradford formed his Louisiana Gravity Irrigation Co. to begin the work. It was a grand vision and might indeed have created an Eden along its banks.
But it appears that the big capitalists didn’t come through like they might have, and the canal apparently never got started.
Two years later, in 1914, we find Bradford still promoting the idea, but receiving far less press acclaim. When he spoke to a convention of drainage experts in Crowley in June 1914, he got only several lines noting that he “delivered an interesting lecture on his canal scheme, illustrated with a large map.”
A month later his name begins to appear in Sheriff’s Sale advertisements and not too long after that the Louisiana Gravity Irrigation Co. – and his grand scheme – ended up in bankruptcy with, as far as I can find, not one spadeful of the canal actually dug.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.