The town of Jefferson, Texas is a living reminder of this nation's steamboat era. If your not interested in history, especially the old south, you probably shouldn't waste your time going to Jefferson.
Jefferson was established as a inland port. It is approximately two hundred water miles from the Gulf of Mexico.
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The Gracious Ghost, Caddo Lake, Texas
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The idea was to make it easier to haul bulk goods from the Gulf coast to places in North Texas.
It would also aide the agriculture interest by giving cotton growers an access to market.
The second great use for this inland seaport was the settling of Texas.
The steamboats brought in the European immigrants. So trade goods and immigrants in and cotton, wood and other agricultural products out.
So picture this. You have steamboats tied up at the warf of an 1850's town. The slaves are off loading goods onto wagons drawn by mules or oxen.
Those wagons and trade goods are on the way to North Texas towns. The wagon trains were nose to tail for the two hundred miles to Dallas.
The Bayou traffic was so heavy the Captains had to wait for days. When the boats were empty, they were reloaded for the trip to New Orleans and other major ports.
This commercial activity was necessary to the development of the entire region. Otherwise farmers would have been required to send the cotton wagons all the way down to the gulf. It would have driven the production costs too high for market.
Remember there was no railroad or any other way to move heavy goods. Just the steamboats.
Now let me take a small step back. The town's founding was in 1841. The river boat traffic was from about 1845 to 1872. The town would grow to over 7,000 people and be a wealthy, highly sophisticated community.
But there was a natural occurence which brought about the opportunity to create this wealth.
The town was connected to the Red River by the Big Cypress Bayou. The riverboats came up the Mississippi, then onto Red, then turned into Big Cypress Bayou, traveled through Caddo Lake into the town of Jefferson.
Jefferson is located just across the Texas line and to the northwest of Shreveport, Louisiana.
But there was an anomaly of nature at work here. The Red River was backed up by a thirty mile long log jam. The Caddo Indians told the whites that it had always been that way. Today's science says the log jam started somewhere around 1100 A.D.
About that time the Red changed course. When that happened it caused debris such as logs, trees and the like to jam up and form a dam. The log jam backed up the water which in turn raised the levels of Big Cypress Bayou and Caddo Lake.
That was nature. Politics also played a role in Jefferson's future. When the Louisiana Territory was sold to the U.S., the French and Americans claimed the Sabine River to be the southern - western border. The Spanish disagreed and claimed the Red River to be the border. Ergo trouble in the area between the two rivers. Spain raided and the citizens petitioned the U.S. government to protect them.
The settlers wanted gun boats to run the length of the Red River. They felt it would be a military solution to a political problem.
Obviously the people of Jefferson realized their livelihoods depended on that logjam staying in place. There must have been counter lobbying going on from that quarter.
Arkansas and Louisiana asked Congress to appropriate money to remove the log jam. Finally after many starts and stops, and several years, it got done. Steams saws and nitroglycerin finally did the job.
Once cleared the river released the flood from upstream. That in turn lowered Caddo Lake and the Big Cypress Bayou.
The results might have been good for Shreveport and the communities up river but it was devastating to Jefferson's port business. The town began to decline. Steamboats could no longer travel up shallow Bayou.
Something else happened further sealing Jefferson's fate. Business had been so good during the hey day of the steamboats Jefferson failed to land Jay Gould's new east Texas railroad. Jefferson was now without river traffic and the railroad missed her completely. Left high and dry as they say, high and dry.
Jefferson lost over half it's population in the next five years. The population one hundred and fifty years later is near 2,500.
When I visited, the town seemed to be going through a rebirth as a tourist and retirement town.
In these pictures you will see business buildings and homes from that mid nineteenth century period of prosperity. The architecture is similar to that of New Orleans or any other major port during that time.
We have to remember the citizens of Jefferson were connected to other river towns and expected their town to look similar. Go to any small town with steamboats in it's past and you will find architecture similar to what I am showing you here. An example would be Batesville, Arkansas. In some cases a river boat captain or captain of commerce might have had homes on both ends of the river.
My visits to this little east Texas town have been wonderful. The people still have a genteel attitude and the town reflects it.
I could live in Jefferson. Most of the growth seems to be on the Bayou and Caddo Lake for recreational homes. I will try to show them in another story.
I hope you enjoy this little story. I've got a couple more up my sleeve.
John Boykin
"The Hard Hat Photographer"
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