Dixie Inn: A Chicken or the Egg Problem

I've been writing my column for the Press-Herald for 10 years now and there are several topics I've been requested to address that I've just not gotten done. I don't think it's entirely a problem created by my struggles with procrastination (although I'd like to wait until tomorrow to make up my mind about that), some hangups have been simple research problems. With my second job limiting me to weekend research, it's just tough to find research libraries open on the weekend. That's part of the problem, but in some cases it is simply the absence of good sources still in existence. Tonight at Dorcheat Seafood and Grill I was reminded of perhaps the most-requested column that I've not been able to produce as yet -- the story of Dixie Inn.

Dorcheat Bayou was the "street" that opened the settlement of Overton and then Minden, so the bayou area has a long history. We know that as early as the 1830s the east bank of Dorcheat was a hub of commerce. Known either as Murrell's Point or Minden Upper Landing, it was the site of warehouses and the steamboat landing for Minden. By the early 1850s, the Claiborne Parish Police Jury discussed constructing a bridge across the Bayou at that location. By 1864, not only was that bridge in place, it had been there long enough that it was reported in disrepair by Confederate General Polignac.

(As Polignac and his troops of Walker's Texas Division approached Minden from the west to establish Winter Quarters in the late Fall of 1864, he halted his army at the bridge and was afraid to take his troops across because of the ramshackle condition of the bridge. He even made a sketch of the state of the bridge for his journal. While he hesitated, a carriage of ladies bravely crossed right in front of the troops and the army was "shamed" into crossing. As another aside, all shipments of heavy equipment to Minden during the Civil War did not use the roads or bridges, they came by way of Red River, Loggy Bayou, Lake Bistineau and were unloaded on the east bank of Dorcheat.)

So, the east side of Dorcheat in the area of the two existing Highway 80 bridges was busy. One can only assume that something existed across the bayou on the west bank. But there is little in the record to indicate what might have been there, other than farm land. It is equally clear that the boom for what we know today as Dixie Inn came in the summer of 1941, when the Louisiana Ordnance Plant began construction. Even a casual glance will reveal that the houses that make up the main area of Dixie Inn date from that time as they mirror the style of the subdivisions in Minden built at the same time as the local area responded to a housing crush. The influx of workers, both for constructing the plant and the operating the facility brought thousands of folks to the Minden area and the residential community we call Dixie Inn emerged.

My problem with information arises in the years between 1864 and 1941 and a major problem -- as reflected in the title of this post -- is that name we use today for the community, Dixie Inn. Newspaper clippings clearly indicate that by the time the Dixie-Overland Highway (Highway 80) was constructed (1930-31), the point where that new road intersected the existing road to Springhill was the site of filling stations and other businesses. However, the name "Dixie Inn" for the settlement doesn't appear in those newspaper accounts. That name first appears in print prior to the road construction, around 1924, but it appears as the name of the restaurant/dance hall/nightclub located on the site of today's Dorcheat Seafood and Grill along the west bank of Dorcheat. The restaurant was known as the Dixie Inn, but nowhere can I find, prior to the post World War II years the name used for the community, just for the restaurant.

So, I'm stuck at that point, was the restaurant named because locals already referred to the area as "Dixie Inn", or was the name for the settlement, and eventually the incorporated place created in the 1950s, taken from the name of the restaurant.

Anyone out there with a clue, let me know. Maybe with that behind me, I can go ahead and put together the story of the settlement  . . . . unless I find another excuse for "putting it off."