Holding Out, to Last Isle, as Gulf Takes Cajun Land

The men still bark orders in a French patois here while at work along the banks of Bayou Lafourche, a watery main street whose lazy currents the color of smoky topaz flow south to other Cajun towns and the Gulf of Mexico.

The route enjoys a history of beguiling newcomers with its curious swamp-life customs, pirate tales and exuberant seafood offerings, which were already well-documented in 1941 when writers for the government’s Work Projects Administration set out to create travel guides for all the states. The writers’ project has been republished online and is attracting new attention.

Here, about an hour south of New Orleans, the writers followed Bayou Lafourche (pronounced la-FOOSH) to the gulf along a “graveled and shell roadbed” that is now Louisiana Highway 1, fully paved. They gushed about “boom fishing centers,” newly discovered oil and the seemingly endless bounty of the Gulf of Mexico, the area’s economic lifeblood, in Golden Meadow (population, 2,500; altitude, two feet).

“This part of the state is a lush land of great fecundity,” an unnamed writer enthused.

There was little hint of what was to come.

Golden Meadow is sinking fast along with the rest of the southeastern Louisiana coast into the gulf, still its lifeblood but now also its nemesis.

“From year to year we can see the land that used to be there is not there anymore,” said Elphege Brunet Jr., whose family lives and works up and down the bayou. “I’m almost 77 and I’ve seen it change before my eyes.”

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