The first people to settle
the lake were Mr. and Mrs.
LeBleu of Bordeaux, France.
They arrived in 1781 and
secured their home six miles
east of the present site of
Lake Charles, living
in peaceful coexistence with
several tribes of Indians.
This area originally settled
by the LeBleu's is now known
as LeBleu Settlement.
Other pioneers quickly
ventured to Lake Charles.
Among them was Charles
Sallier who married LeBleu's
daughter, Catherine. The
Sallier's built their home
on the lake, in the area now
known as Lake Charles. After
Charles Sallier built his
home in this area, the lake
became known as Charlie's
Lake. By 1860 this area was
being called "Charleston" or
"Charles Town."
Settlers at the turn of
the century acquired
property from the
Indians or they
homesteaded the Rio
Hondo lands. The Rio
Hondo which flowed
through Lake Charles was
later called Quelqueshue,
an Indian term meaning
"Crying Eagle" and still
later Calcasieu. Little
is known of these early
residents except that
they were a mixture of
English, French, Spanish
and Dutch. On March 7,
1861, Lake Charles was
incorporated as the town
of Charleston,
Louisiana.
The growth of the city
was fairly slow until
Captain Daniel Goos came
in 1855. He established
a lumber mill and
schooner dock, now
Goosport, and promoted a
profitable trade with
Texas and Mexican ports
by sending his schooner
down-river into the Gulf
of Mexico. Most of the
wood which built the
city came from Goos'
mill. Until the arrival
of Goos, Jacob Ryan
dominated the lumber
industry.
Ryan convinced the state
government to move the
parish seat to Lake
Charles. Later that
year, Ryan and Samuel
Kirby transferred the
parish courthouse and
jail to Lake Charles, at
that time called
Charleston. Six years
after the city was
incorporated,
dissatisfaction over the
name Charleston arose.
On March 16, 1867,
Charleston, Louisiana,
was incorporated into
the town of Lake
Charles.
Early
Industry
Isolated by the
Atchafalaya swamp on the
east, the Gulf of Mexico
to the south, and the
great virgin pine and
cypress forests to the
north, Lake Charles
emerged as a settlement
largely cut off from the
mainstream mind of the
South. From the city's
very beginning, no one
ethnic group, race,
religion or politics
dominated the culture.
Oral tradition holds
that Jean Lafitte
frequented Contraband
Bayou and the lake, a
story best substantiated
by a black man of
Moorish descent who met
Lake Charles' early
settlers.
The first white settlers
were Martin LeBleu and his
wife Dela Marion. Leaving
Bordeaux, France in 1775,
they arrived before the
beginning of the nineteenth
century. Soon to follow was
Charles Sallier, a native of
Spain and the first white
man to build a house within
what are now the city limits
of Lake Charles. He married
Catherine LeBleu in 1802,
and they had the first white
child born in Southwest
Louisiana. In an area
earlier inhabited by native
Indians, European immigrants
began to hew out the land.
By 1817, Jacob Ryan had
arrived and settled 160
acres on the east shore of
Lake Charles. Ryan was the
first settler whose main
objective was lumber, and it
was he who built the first
of many sawmills and the
town's first industry. That
mill stood near the Chase
Bank building and the
Capital One Tower. The town
grew up along the lake,
actually around the Jacob
Ryan sawmill. Lumber was the
town's reason to exist.
Without lumber there would
not have been the basic
natural resources that early
settlers knew how to refine
into finished products
necessary to develop the
town's economy.
Between 1817 and 1855,
longleaf yellow pine and
some cypress remained the
primary industry. It was in
1855 that Captain Daniel
Goos, a Frisian by birth,
came to Lake Charles. He too
built a sawmill, but soon
branched out into building
schooners, tug-boats and
even steamboats. "Charlie's
Lake," "Charlestown" and
finally "Lake Charles"
found itself doing extensive
trade with Galveston. A
close bond grew between the
two towns, and Lake Charles
lumber found Galveston to be
its gateway to the American
West.
The beginning of the 1860's
would bring the war years,
but Southwest Louisiana had
its own unique attitude
toward the war. Both English
and northeastern Americans
had come to settle Lake
Charles, not to mention a
large influx of continental
Europeans and Jews.
Attitudes toward slavery in
Lake Charles were mixed; and
certainly choosing sides
remained secondary to
business interests. The
citizenry did finally become
involved in the war, and
young men of local families
went to serve the South.
Coupled with the
cosmopolitan citizenry and
the geographic location of
the town, the outcome of the
war had little or no
socio-political effect on
Lake Charles - except that
the end of the war did
produce a still greater
lumber exporting business to
Galveston and the nation.
The cheap pine made the town
flourish. Other settlers
continued to move in. More
sawmills were being built by
men like Rudolph Krause, a
native German; and a few
years later, Midwesterners
from Kansas, namely the
Kings and the Webers, would
also build mills.
The 1880's saw the small
sawmill village develop into
a boom town, thanks to the
innovative advertising
methods of a man named J.B.
Watkins. With his astounding
$200,000 advertising
campaign, the town grew 400%
in the 80's. Cultural
activists became important,
and Lake Charles had
a definite geographic
advantage. Traveling
entertainment that New
Orleans enjoyed was most
often performed in Lake
Charles on Sunday evenings.
Texas had Sunday closing
laws, and many traveling
troupes which passed through
the South to New Orleans and
on to Galveston and Houston
usually found Lake Charles a
good place for a one-night
Sunday performance before
going west into Texas.
By the 1890's, finer homes
were being built. Although
the town had no real
architects, carpenters of
significant artistic ability
each tried to out build each
other with their use of
elaborate fretwork and
Victorian decoration. Fancy
spindles, newel posts,
soldiers and paneled doors -
all native of pine - filled
the houses. Merchants like
Leopold Kaufman imported
fine linens, china,
furniture and all kinds of
household goods for the
affluent society of the
time.
Many events would transpire
in Lake Charles
during the next hundred
years, but enough of the old
part of the residential
district has been preserved
to reveal the city's grand
past. The virgin pine and
cypress forests are gone and
the last mill has long since
closed, but the pine and
cypress houses of the
nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries stand as
a reminder of the great
lumber era that contributed
so much to the growth and
development of Southwest
Louisiana.
*Information provided by
the Louisiana
Preservation Alliance.
Gerstner
Field
Gerstner Field was a
large World War I
aviation training camp
that existed during the
years 1917-1921 about 15
miles southeast of Lake
Charles. Today the green
and white Gerstner
Memorial Drive signs in
Lake Charles along La.
Hwy. 14 point the way
southward to the
crossroads village of
Holmwood near where the
field was once located.
Travelers will find a
historical marker
located one-half mile
south of Holmwood on LA
Hwy. 27 (the Creole
Nature Trail) at the
corner of Old Camp Road.
During its short time of
existence, Gerstner
Field took in several
thousand acres of land
westward from La. Hwy.
27 on both sides of Old
Camp Road. The field's
24 hangars were lined up
on the south side of the
road. Most of the other
buildings, including its
barracks, shops, YMCAs,
and headquarters, about
90 buildings of various
sizes, were located on
the north side of the
road between Camp Road
and a railroad spur
extending along the
field's northern
boundary.
Today the site looks
nothing like an air
field. All of the old
buildings were torn down
or moved away shortly
after World War I. The
land on which the field
existed is now private
property and not
available to public
access, but a few of the
old concrete
foundations, the camp's
two deep wells, and its
sewer plant can still be
seen from Old Camp Road.
Many of the old
foundations that are
still there, such as
those of its 24 hangars,
are now covered with
tall weeds and tallow
trees.
Gerstner Field was
Lake Charles' and
Louisiana's first
military air field.
(Please note: Gerstner
Field is not to be
confused with the Lake
Charles Air Base which
was built in another
location on the east
side of town during
World War II. After that
base was closed, it was
was later reopened and
enlarged during the Cold
War into a Strategic Air
Command base for B-47s
that was named for
General Claire Chennault
of Flying Tiger fame.)
During Gerstner Field's
short history several
thousand persons worked
at the camp to graduate
a total of 499 fighter
pilots and aviation
instructors from its
training courses. These
graduates were sent
either overseas to
participate in the war
or to other air fields
around the country to
serve as instructors.
The federal government
built Gerstner Field
near Lake Charles
largely because of the
untiring lobbying
efforts of the Lake
Charles Chamber of
Commerce under the
leadership of C.D. Moss,
president; and Herbert
B. Bayliss, executive
secretary. Bayliss spent
the entire summer of
1917 lobbying in
Washington, D.C., in
cooperation with
Congressman Ladislas
Lazaro to win the field
in competition with
Baton Rouge, Monroe and
about 100 other towns
and cities around the
country.
When the Chamber's
efforts were finally
successful, Lake
Charles businessmen
and members of the
Chamber paid for leasing
the land, running the
utilities to the site,
and organizing the
housing and other forms
of assistance needed to
meet the needs of the
5,000 workers who
leveled the land and
built the camp in only
four months of intense
work during late summer
and fall of 1917.
On November 16, 1917,
when construction work
was nearly completed,
the Army began sending
hundreds of young
fliers, mechanics, and
support personnel, some
of the nation's best
educated and most
talented young men, to
this facility. Soon over
2,000 military persons
were working to meet
training schedules,
maintain airplanes and
provide the daily
necessities that kept
the fliers and airplanes
going.
During its one year of
service during the war,
nothing was easy at
Gerstner Field. The
Signal Corps Aviation
Service put tremendous
pressure upon the
field's commanders to
produce trained pilots
in a hurry. But speed in
training combined with
fragile aircraft meant a
high number of accidents
and the loss of many
lives. Other problems
included wartime
equipment shortages,
localized flooding at
the camp, the worldwide
Spanish flu epidemic of
1918, and the strong,
unannounced hurricane of
Aug. 6, 1918, which
killed two soldiers,
battered barracks,
destroyed hangars, and
mangled 100 airplanes.
From the time the first
aviation units arrived
at Gerstner Field, area
residents made a point
of being friendly to all
of them. On weekends and
holidays residents
invited the soldiers
into their homes, and
they even cleared
homemade landing strips
to encourage pilots to
land nearby in Lake
Charles and towns as far
away as Vinton, Jennings
and Oakdale. Gerstner
Field fliers in their
Curtis JN-4 Jenny
trainers provided many
Southwest Louisiana folk
with their first
glimpses of airplanes.
When the camp was
finally closed and
demolished, it left
Lake Charles and
Southwest Louisiana with
a penchant for aviation
that continues to this
day.
Lake Charles,
Louisiana Zipcodes
70601, 70602, 70605,
70606, 70607, 70609,
70615, 70616, 70629
https://lakecharles.craigslist.org/
