Down Among the Sugar Cane
In 1795, Louisiana plantation owner Étienne de Bore successfully produced granulated sugar from boiling cane juice, and the agricultural economy of Louisiana changed forever.
The sugar industry eventually progressed from a process almost totally dependent on hand labor, grinding 250 tons of cane daily, to a mechanized system which now grinds as much as 6,000 tons of cane every twenty-four hours.
De Boré extracted sugar from cane by a system called an open kettle mill, a process that was extremely slow. In 1822, Jean J. Coiron introduced a steam-powered sugar mill, and sugar plantations sprang up along Louisiana's rivers and bayous where only indigo and tobacco had been grown before.
The increased capacity for producing sugar called for new methods of transport, and in the 1880s, the little plantation trains, powered by steam locomotives, appeared across south Louisiana.
Narrow gauge tracks were laid where mule-drawn carts had once hauled cane from the fields to the mills. Up and down the Mississippi River and the bayous, the south Louisiana tranquility was broken by the shrill cries of engine whistles and the squeal of locomotive brakes.
The transport of this cane was so well facilitated by the small railroads that many people called the period the "golden era" of sugar cane. It was a time when each plantation had its own railroad and mill. It was the era when days of hard work during grinding season often ended with a "sugar house party" when groups of merry youngsters rode the little trains to the mills to taste the sweet cane and sample the thick, brown sugar.
But as the open kettle mills had made way for steam-powered mills, so did the little railroads move aside for more versatile transportation provided by gasoline-powered trucks and tractors. By the 1960s, most of Louisiana's little trains lay idle, their whistles hushed in the memories of the men and women who operated and rode them.
In his Down Among the Sugar Cane, the author takes his readers back to the "golden era" with description of a lifestyle long gone but never forgotten. From ten years of study and more than 100 personal interviews, he has compiled histories of over forty of Louisiana's sugar plantations. His portrayals of them include vestiges of by-gone days, including one-room plantation schoolhouses, quarterhouses, garçon- nieres, and those magnificent plantation mansions so much a part of the heritage of Louisiana and the South.
Butler, himself a railroad buff, also gives detailed and technical accounts of each railroad, its locomotives and other rolling stock. In addition, more than 240 photographs tell a visual story about the plantations and railroads as they were decades ago and as they are now.
Hardback with dust jacket, 22x28cm, 266 pages, black & white photographs
Condition: Good/Very Good
ISBN: 9780871080455
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