Southeastern Louisiana University

History professors' book chronicles socioeconomic history of Pass Manchac region

Contact: Christina Chapple

11/1/06

     HAMMOND – More than two decades of research by a pair of veteran Southeastern Louisiana University history professors has been gathered in a new book, “Backdoor to the Gulf: An American Paradise Lost, the Pass Manchac Region, 1699-2006.”

     The book by Charles A. Dranguet Jr. and Roman J. Heleniak was funded by Southeastern’s Lake Pontchartrain Basin Research Program through a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. Copies of the book will be distributed to elected officials and other policy makers and made available in area libraries, Dranguet said.

     A socioeconomic history of the Manchac region, the book’s major emphasis is the demise of the great cypress forest which once covered 129,000 acres of the narrow strip of land, marsh and forest separating lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain and the areas west and south of Lake Maurepas.

     Dranguet, who is also interim director of Southeastern’s International Initiatives Office, and Heleniak, former head of the Department of History and Political Science, describe the book as “a labor of love.” After “countless forays” into the region during more than 35 years of teaching at Southeastern, the professors said they have come to know the Manchac Swamp intimately.

     The book’s four chapters examine facets of the region’s history, including the first recorded exploration of Bayou Manchac in 1699; the shipping heyday of the 1830-50s; the coming of the railroad and the skirmishes around its rails during the Civil War; the lost communities of Frenier, Ruddock and LaBranche; and the ultimately disastrous operations of the cypress industry that denuded the swamp from the 1870s to the 1920s.

     Dranguet and Heleniak also include a chapter about the area’s residents whom they describe as the “new hunters and gatherers” -- the “campers” who spend leisure time on the swamp’s waters and banks and the “swampers” who, like the earliest Native American inhabitants, “eke out a living from whatever nature provided.”

     Their research is supplemented by oral history accounts from former residents of the communities swept away by early 20th century hurricanes, such as the late Helen Burg, who recalled life in Ruddock and Frenier and families, such as the Renos, who have lived and worked in the swamp for generations.

     Dranguet said the double devastation in 2005 of the hurricanes Katrina and Rita has “reminded residents of southeast Louisiana of how vulnerable the region is to major storms.

     “If we are reminded of the damage man has done to the wetlands discussed in this publication,” he said, “we might be less likely to repeat the abuse of the Manchac environment.”