Red River Landing of Pointe Coupee Parish

A very detailed map from 1862 of the Mississippi River from its headwaters to its delta included the portion where the Red River entered the mighty river just above Henry Shreve's infamous Cut Off of 1831. The map is linked at the end of the article (Barry Lawrence Ruderman).

A rare map of the Mississippi River from 1862, from its beginning to its delta, reveals a lot of detailed information from all points along the storied waterway. For me, though, the real interest was the mouth of the Red River at a place that no longer exists: Red River Landing in Pointe Coupee Parish.

Red River Landing got its start with "Shreve's Cut," so-named when Captain Henry Shreve and his crew dug out a channel to connect bends of the Mississippi River for faster shipping purposes. A mere century later, Shreve's Cut became the reason for the water controls of the Red and Atchafalaya Rivers -- the cut allowed the Mississippi to drain its water into the Red River and the much smaller Atchafalaya River, creating massive channels that threatened to dry-dock the commercial traffic of the lower Mississippi and inundate the lands in the Red and Atchafalaya River basins.

Shreve made his short-sighted cut in 1831, and in the short term, the cut benefited Red River Landing. By 1836, it appeared that the Red and Atchafalaya Rivers were becoming the gateway to the southwest from New Orleans, and Red River Landing, a private plantation dock at the confluence of the Red and Mississippi River, was growing into a larger business location. It was not meant for mass settlement, however. Hotels, saloons, merchants, and warehouses congregated around the loading docks, where steamboats anchored to load cotton for shipment to New Orleans; unload whiskey, fabrics, chinaware, and other goods to sell at the stores; take on mail for points northward or southward; and serve the various people who were traveling northward on the Red River to Alexandria, Natchitoches, Shreveport, Port Caddo (TX) and Jefferson (TX).

Red River Landing was also where a ferry brought passengers across the Mississippi from the Angola Plantation Landing. This ferry remained in operation until, at least, the late 1990s, though by that time it was reserved exclusively for the employees of Angola State Prison.

By the 1850s, Red River Landing was the terminus for three weekly mail and passenger coaches that connected New Orleans to Alexandria and Shreveport. Its prominence allowed the growth of enterprises at other nearby locations, like Smithland, Sim's Port (Simmesport) and Lettsworth, and kept Port Williams (Williamsport) along the Old River Channel afloat for a time, too.

While the Texas and Pacific sought to bring its tracks through Red River Landing at the turn of the 20th century, it instead bypassed the river town in favor of Lettworth as it wasn't as water-logged. This, along with the "divorce" of the Red River from the Mississippi River due to the shifting river channels that threatened to flood southern Louisiana below Shreve's Cut, gradually put an end to Red River Landing.

Link to 1862 map, courtesy Barry Lawrence Ruderman's Rare Maps.

Link to Facebook Group for Pointe Coupee Parish, source of ferry image.

Steamboats on the Mississippi River, connecting Vicksburg to New Orleans, chugged by Red River Landing from the 1830s until the 1890s (this ad is from The Times Picayne, New Orleans, in 1862). The railroads and the locks and dams that prevented the Red River's waters from flooding of the Mississippi River eventually also took the life of Red River Landing.

An advertisement from The Courier Journal (New Orleans) in 1836 told travelers to visit Red River Landing's newest House of Entertainment, "immediately below Shreeve's Cut-off."

Red River Landing was a gateway to the Southwest for points east of the Mississippi River, including a route to slavery-free Mexico. This notice, posted in The Times Picayune (New Orleans) in 1851, tells of the enslaved cooper Joseph McLeoud, who "reads and wrote and probably wrote his own pass," using the ferry at Red River Landing to escape. Knowing that lower Louisiana was the proverbial place meant in the adage, "to sell someone down the river," and that Solomon Northrup, also a literate man, had been kidnapped to be trafficked into Louisiana during this era, makes me wonder if Josiah McLeoud may have also been kidnapped.

A photo of the ferry at Red River Landing in the 20th century, from the Pointe Coupee Parish Library and posted in the Pointe Coupee Parish Facebook Group, which is linked at the end of the article.

Lettworth, standing between the Atchafalaya and Mississippi Rivers where once the Red River flowed, became a railroad town when the Texas and Pacific Railway came through at the turn of the century, bypassing Red River Landing and its much more complex, watery geography.

In 1871, the Galveston Daily News published this map to show how a proposed railroad would connect its city to Meridian, Mississippi, while passing through Red River Landing (indicated at 4 on the map). This railroad route never was built, though.

By 1895, proposals to "divorce" the Red River from the Mississippi River were becoming more urgent as flooding was threatening all of southern Louisiana due to Shreve's Cut of 1831. By 1948, the locks and channels at today's Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area prevented the Red and Atchafalaya Rivers from overpowering the Mississippi's waterway.