The Holland of America

Gueydan's marketing strategy of 1905

Gueydan has schools, churches, a library, hotels, machine shops, warehouses, lumber yards and several other business houses.  It has mail, express, telegraph and telephone facilities.  The public park is well laid off with shade trees.  The climate is good, owing to the invigorating salt breeze from the Gulf, during the summer months.  Several fraternal orders have lodges here in flourishing condition.  The "Gueydan News" is a wide-awake weekly, and the Brass Band is very popular.  The yearly rice crop amounts to about 300,000 bags.  This part of the State will eventually be a great dairy country. 

The low lands south of Gueydan have been formed by decayed vegetation and are a black loam from one to three feet deep, over a clay subsoil.  Owing to lack of drainage, water is held over them the greater part of the year.  The ground is solid, however, both members of our firm having walked every foot from White Lake to Gueydan.  This land is very fertile.  All it needs is drainage, followed by aeration.  Trees grow well.  A food has never been known in the Gueydan country.  These are the lands that the company will buy. 

The Holland of the United States

There is going on in Louisiana, at the expense of private capital, an enterprise that ranks as of much greater value to the country than the irrigation proposition that Congress has had to consider regularly for several sessions.

Some time ago Northern capitalists concluded that it was possible to reclaim and put in cultivation what is known as the "wet prairies" of Louisiana, and have backed their judgment with a few million dollars.

A glance at the map of Louisiana shows a body of land lying along the Gulf of Mexico, known as the "wet prairies."  These wet prairies are covered with a rank of growth of grass, which usually burns over once a year, and in that manner is kept down the forest growth.  The cypress swamps and wet prairies may properly be termed the unfinished work of the Mississippi River.  The process of natural land building has been stopped, it becomes necessary, in order to have these lands utilized, for man to do artificially what which nature would have done if left unhampered.  The prairie lands have on top of the bed of silt, and more or less mixed with it, from a foot to three or four feet of vegetable mold.  During the wet season of the year the prairies are wet and soft, rendering the land unsuitable for any purpose whatever except pasturage during the dry season.

"About five or six years ago some Northern people, upon investigation, decided that these "wet prairies" could be reclaimed, and nearly 2,000,000 acres of them were purchased by Northern investors, 1,200,000 acres passing into the hands of one concern.  About this time resident owners have began experimenting in a small way, and together with what has been done by Northern and local people the feasibility of the reclamation of these lands has been thoroughly demonstrated.

"The process of reclamation is very simple.  A canal is dug around the tract to be reclaimed and a levee made with the dirt from the canal on the outside of the tract.  Cross canals are cut pumping establishments installed and the water pumped off of the tract does not seep in, and all that is necessary is to take care of the water which falls on the land itself.  The canals are dug with steam dredges, and the expense of reclamation has proved to be less that one-half of what it costs to clear up land of stumps after the timber is removed.  Artificial drainage of land in Louisiana is not new; it has been employed by the large sugar planters for many years.  The cost of pumping the water off of these reclaimed prairies is no greater than it is on the plantations which are now drained in that manner.

"The cost of reclamation of these lands varies according to the ability and efficiency of the people who have the work in charge, but it is within the bounds to say that the large canals and necessary levees which will put the land in position for the smaller drainage work will cost not to exceed $5.oo per acre, and in some cases one-half of that.  The cost of the smaller ditches depends upon what the land is to be used for, but is no greater than any ditching in flat land.  It is safe to say that this land can be made ready for cultivation from its raw state for less than $10.00 per acre.

"The importance of this drainage opportunity to investors can hardly be overestimated.  Lands which five years ago had no value at all, and which now have a value of from $3 to $8 per acre, will be made worth at least $100 per acre on an average.

"One of the most attractive features of the reclamation work is the rapidity with which the lands can be brought into cultivation when compared with clearing up of timbered country.  The work ha only fairly started at the present time, but enough has been done to thoroughly demonstrate its practability, and the profits are so large and absolutely certain that there is going to be no difficulty whatever in securing the co-operation of capital to accomplish the work.  The capitalists do not have to wait until all the work is done to get results, as each tract (whatever its size) as fast as it is reclaimed becomes immediately available.  Thus will be created in south Louisiana a new and greater Holland.  By reason of its favorable climatic conditions the 'Netherlands' of Louisiana should and undoubtedly will support a larger population than the Netherlands of Europe.

"The soil cannot be excelled anywhere in the world.  The proximity to New Orleans, with its unrivaled transportation facilities, will cause these lands to be sought for by people from all parts of the world who prize inexhaustible fertility, combined with location, adjacent to what is certain to be one of the world cities of the future.

"Artificially drained land is looked upon by people who are not familiar with it as a very expensive undertaking.  As a matter of fact, one year with another, no more rain falls upon a tract of land than is needed.  The pumping plants are maintained only for emergencies and unusually wet seasons.  Some years they are not operated at all, but twenty-five cents per acre per year may be considered extravagant estimate for the cost of pumping water off the land.

"Artificially-drained land has many advantages over naturally-drained land.  The agriculturist with artificial drainage has absolute command of the situation.  The land can stand drought better and can be irrigated if necessary at a very slight expense.  People who have had experience with artificially-drained land prefer it, and contend that its annual producing capacity is so much greater than naturally-drained land that the cost of draining is comparatively a very small item.

"The future value of these lands is, of course, a matter of uncertainty.  $100 is a conservative estimate of the value of this kind of land now; that it will steadily enhance in value is the opinion of all agricultural experts.  Based upon the producing capacity and the rental value of these lands, they are worth from $200 to $250 per acre.  The revenue-producing capacity of land does not in Louisiana at the present time determine its value.  There is no other state in the Union producing anywhere near the crop values that Louisiana does, and when conditions become settled and the state is fully developed, unquestionably the value of these lands will be gauged, as they are in the older-settled countries of the world, by the revenues which they produce.  $250 to $300 per acre is not an extravagant estimate of the future value of these lands.  The character of the crops that they produce will fully justify these values.  It is not necessary, however, to speculate in regard to the future.  The value of cultivated land in south Louisiana is already sufficiently high to render the reclamation of these lands the safest and most profitable investment to be found anywhere."