Questions, questions, questions.

Another new batch of questions, I'm not so much looking for answers this time, because I really haven't worked on these, but it's amazing how one conversation on local history can produce so many questions as it moves forward.

At Tuesday night's meeting of the Dorcheat Historical Association Board the question came up if we had a photo of one of the actual steamboats that were used on Bayou Dorcheat during the roughly 75 years of the local steamboat era. Most people associate the word steamboat with images of the massive ornate boats like those used by modern-day casinos or in the movies. The reality is that the packet boats that frequented streams like Dorcheat were much smaller, simply because of the shallow draft necessary to travel in such streams, and not nearly so attractive. While so far as I know there is not an existing image of a boat that definitely was used on Dorcheat, there are images of similar boats. In fact Eric Brock and Gary Joiner compiled a photo book on Red River Steamboats for Arcadia Press a few years ago. It is no longer in print, but I'm sure Gary still has access to the images. So, that question is answered; however, it led to so many others.

The discussion turned to steamboat wrecks on Dorcheat and if any are still visible at times, like now, of low water. We know there was one wreck in the area of the old Highway 80 bridge on Dorcheat, extremely visible as late as the 1940s. The general consensus of those involved in the discussion -- Richard Campbell whose mother saved so much Webster Parish history and Larry Milford, who grew up in the McIntyre Community -- was that some of the remains of that wreck are still visible, just south of the "new" Highway 80 bridge. Moving on, we talked about another group of wood debris visible just south of the Interstate 20 bridge over the Bayou. We were not so sure about that one, Richard, who has much more experience with the Bayou than I, thinks that is merely tree stumps.

That led to another interesting discussion about an old bridge that formerly crossed Bayou Dorcheat. In the years prior to the digging of the bar pits and the creation of the Louisiana Ordnance Plant there was another road that ran in the area south of the Interstate and north of Highway 164 that bridged Bayou Dorcheat. I've heard about this for years, but have not yet found a map that indicates where the road started and where it ended, but the bridge is long gone.

That idea turned us to a discussion of the Overton Cemetery and the sad destruction of so much of the cemetery over the last 50+ years. The interesting question raised was one I had never fully considered. We know where the cemetery is located, but where was the town in relation to the cemetery? Clearly it sat on the Bayou, but north or south of the cemetery? My educated guess would be south, as if it were located much north of the cemetery it would leave very little room for the old Middle Landing on Dorcheat. Overton was the lower landing, then there was the middle landing which stood at the terminus of the extended route of today's Middle Landing Street, and finally the upper landing at Murrell's Point, which was on the east bank of Dorcheat at approximately the site of the "old" Highway 80 bridge. (Of course another question is precisely where was that landing?)

So, it is pretty amazing to see so many historical questions arise out of a casual conversation. Just another reminder of how much history there remains to learn. (Which is a wonderful job assurance for a history teacher . . . .)