The Old Spanish Auto Trail

The Old Spanish Auto Trail

Old Spanish Trail Road Map - Southern Louisiana - 1924

      I grew up in an old house on the Old Spanish Auto Trail.  It was located between the town of Houma and the small village of Gibson, Louisiana along the old federal Highway 90 that ran parallel to Bayou Black; a path that ran along a ridge just 5 feet above sea level.  Behind the house were 16 acres of farmland usually planted in sugarcane.  Beyond that was a forest of trees that was plentiful with wild game.  And, of course, the swamp lay just beyond that, followed by the Intra-Coastal Canal.  We used to joke that we were close enough to the Gulf of Mexico to spit in it.

      The little school we attended had been built during an era that had seen the harvesting of cypress trees from the surrounding swampland.  When that petered out the population decreased but the eight room school was still there teaching first grade all the way to ninth grade.  Later it would only be eight when the new parish junior high had been built in 1955. 

      In those days much of the Old Spanish Trail that existed in 1905 was still intact but there were places where it had been obliterated by the normal march of progress.  A progress that has continued unabated to this very day, leaving huge gaps in the continuity of the original path.   A number of those gaps were where ferries were once used to cross rivers;  the original ferry crossing the Mississippi from New Orleans to Algiers and the ferry crossing from Morgan City to Berwick across the Atchafalaya being two of them. 

     Other sections of road were replaced with new roadways, like the ones from Raceland to Des Allemand and from Gibson to Amelia.  And, then, there was the complete relocation of Highway 90 from Lafayette to Paradis that completely bypassed or were elevated over towns and other communities along its path.  Much of that route still exists, however, along the current State Highway 182.  

Current Louisiana Road Map