Bayou Chene

Overview

A town that lived by boat

Bayou Chene, French for Oak Bayou, sat where Bayou Chene, Bayou Crook Chene and Little Bayou de Plomb met in the middle of the Atchafalaya Basin, about 40 miles north of Morgan City by Wikipedia's account. It could be reached only by boat. People got around by pirogue and skiff and, from about 1907, by the motor boats called putt-putts.

Planters homesteaded on the bayous in the 1830s and 1840s and grew sugarcane on small plantations. The post office opened in 1858. The Civil War and the floods that followed ruined the planters, and from the 1870s most men worked in cypress logging. Steamboats towed the log rafts to the mills at Plaquemine. Families also fished, trapped, hunted and picked Spanish moss for upholstery stuffing, and these mattered more once large-scale logging ended by about 1925. By the Corps of Engineers' count about 500 people lived there in 1927. Over the years they had stores, a school, Methodist, Catholic, Baptist and Adventist churches, saloons, dances and a baseball team.

The flood of 1927 began the end. Levee building and channel dredging brought repeated flooding, and the floods of 1937 and 1947 drove more families out. Some moved their houses onto the spoil banks of the new channels. The post office closed on Christmas Eve 1952 and almost everyone left. Every spring flood since has left more silt behind. Wikipedia puts the town under about 12 feet of it; the Corps says the basin has gained an average of more than 12 feet. The landscape is now "unrecognizable even to former residents," in the Corps' words.

Timeline

Plantations, cypress and floods

1. 1790s–1841Scattered settlers reach the basin by the 1790s, including a family at Lake Chicot near Bayou Chene. By 1841 at least 16 planters are homesteading on Bayou Chene, Bayou Crook Chene and Bayou de Plomb (USACE, 1999). Wikipedia dates the settlement to the 1830s.
2. 1848–1850The first land claims are registered in June 1848. The 1850 census counts 184 free people in 41 households, 57 of them free people of color, and 93 enslaved people, about 277 in all.
3. 1858A post office opens at Bayou Chene.
4. 1860The population reaches about 675, more than half of them enslaved plantation workers. The small plantations grow sugarcane and boil it in open kettles.
5. 1863–1865Union gunboats and troops raid the basin. Boats, sugarhouses and stored sugar are destroyed, and at the end of the war Bayou Chene is "flooded and abandoned." The post office closes on June 22, 1866, for ten years.
6. 1874A severe flood ends commercial farming. By the 1870s most of the men work in cypress logging.
7. 1907–1927Perhaps the community's best years, by the Corps' account. Boat motors make fishing pay, and fish-boats call several times a week. About 500 people live there in 1927.
8. 1927The Great Mississippi Flood destroys much of the community. Most residents leave during the flood; returning families find four feet of water in their homes.
9. 1933–1937The Bayou Chene Cut is dredged (the 1941 USGS sheet dates it 1933), during the Corps of Engineers' dredging work in the basin that began in the early 1930s. After the 1937 flood some families move their houses onto the high spoil banks of the Bayou Chene and Tarleton cuts. The bank east of Big Bayou Chene becomes Canoeville.
10. About 1945The school moves to a new building north of the Bayou Chene Cut, and the post office moves to Canoeville. The school had 72 children in 1944.
11. Dec 24, 1952The post office closes. "Virtually all" the remaining residents leave soon after, and the school is closed by 1953.
12. 1971Former residents begin holding an annual Bayou Chene reunion.
13. 1997–1999Former residents join a Corps of Engineers visit to the Bayou Chene cemeteries (July 1997). The Corps' 1999 history says houses and graveyards lie under the silt.
14. 2010–2013An antique putt-putt boat club starts a yearly spring pilgrimage by boat to the site. In 2013 its organizer reports seven or eight camps there and no residents. This is the newest dated report from the site we found.

1907 to 1953

School boats, fish-boats and moss

The Corps of Engineers' 1999 history, written from interviews with former residents, describes the town at its height. Fish-boats from the railheads called several times a week to buy catfish, buffalofish and gaspergou, turtles, alligator skins and furs, and to sell groceries, coal oil and gasoline. Moss was picked green from flatboats, cured in piles and then on fences for about six weeks, and sold for about a cent a pound. Most houses were modest, many of them two rooms, and Acadian-style houses and shotguns raised on wood blocks were common. Some families, fishermen's especially, lived on houseboats. Drinking water came from cypress cisterns.

Children rode motor school boats to the Bayou Chene school, which had about 100 pupils in the late 1930s. The Cyrus Case store near the middle of the settlement was long a popular meeting point. Folklore from the 1927 flood tells of Warren Stockstill's goat, stranded in the Methodist church, surviving for weeks on the hymnals and wallpaper. In 1999 the church's original bell was in the Methodist church at Bayou Sorrel, and the Corps wrote that former residents and their families had held an annual reunion since 1971.

What's left

Under the silt

The town is buried. The Corps of Engineers wrote in 1999 that houses, graveyards and other features of Bayou Chene lie beneath the sediment, and that the live oaks that gave the bayou its name are rotting stumps. Wikipedia gives the depth at the townsite as about 12 feet; the Corps gives more than 12 feet as an average for the basin. A 2013 Plaquemine Post South report on the boat club's spring pilgrimage describes seven or eight camps close together at the site, nobody living there, and the old school, Methodist church and cemetery sites within walking distance.

The USGS sheets in the historic maps below show the change. The 1941 Loreauville sheet shows a line of buildings along Bayou Chene and Bayou Crook Chene, with the Bayou Chene Cut, labelled 1933, and Tarleton Bayou to the northeast. On the 1954 sheet only a few buildings are left along the bayou, and more stand on the spoil banks of the cut. The 1960 sheet labels the place Bayou Chene Oil Field, with a handful of buildings. The 1984 sheet has only a dot and the name. The aerial view below shows a small clearing with a few structures on the south bank where the bayous meet.

• Nothing standing from the town
• Buried houses and graves
• School, church and cemetery sites
• A few camps (2013)
• The bayous themselves

Historic maps

Bayou Chene on USGS maps, 1941–1984

Crops from the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, centered on the townsite. Each sheet shows what surveyors mapped that year; compare them with today's topo and aerial on this page.

19411:62,50019541:62,50019601:62,50019841:100,000

Map & directions

Getting there

No mapped road reaches Bayou Chene. Both routes below end at a boat ramp off the Bayou Benoit Levee Road (LA 352) on the west side of the basin, about 6 miles in a straight line west-southwest of the townsite. A 2023 Atchafalaya National Heritage Area page describes the Bayou Benoit Boat Launch, reached from that road, with access to Bayou Chene; we haven't confirmed it is the same ramp. We give no boat route, and we haven't verified who owns the land at the site or whether visitors may land.

Base map: USGS The National Map (public domain). Routes: OSRM on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL), computed October 2026. Times assume dry roads.

Directions go to the boat ramp off the Bayou Benoit Levee Road, where the drive ends, not to the townsite.

Photos

Have photos of Bayou Chene?

We haven’t added photographs of Bayou Chene yet. If you’ve visited, share your photos and a field report below.

The Corps of Engineers’ 1999 history, Bayou Chene: The Life Story of an Atchafalaya Basin Community, includes family photographs lent by former residents.

Visitor reports

Been to Bayou Chene?

Been there lately? Tell the next visitor what you found: whether you could get in, the state of the road and what's still standing. Photos are welcome. We read every report before it appears here.

Thanks. Your report reached us, and we'll read it before it goes on the page.

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Nearby

Other sites near Bayou Chene

Straight-line distance from the townsite to other mapped sites in our Louisiana index.

• Atchafalaya17.9 mi NW · St. Martin
• Bayou Goula22.0 mi E · Iberville
• Morrisonville22.4 mi NE · Iberville
• Burtville27.4 mi NE · East Baton Rouge
• Sherburne28.0 mi NW · Pointe Coupee
• Elliot City29.6 mi N · Pointe Coupee
• False River29.9 mi N · Pointe Coupee
• East Krotz Springs29.9 mi NW · Pointe Coupee

Sources

Sources and credits

1. Wikipedia, "Bayou Chene, Louisiana", retrieved October 2026: settlement in the 1830s, location 40 miles north of Morgan City, the 1858 post office, about 500 residents in the 1920s, the 1927 flood, the school's move in 1945 and closing in 1953, the 1952 post office closing, about 12 feet of silt, coordinates.
2. Benjamin D. Maygarden and Jill-Karen Yakubik, Bayou Chene: The Life Story of an Atchafalaya Basin Community, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District, 1999 (Internet Archive copy, Feb 26, 2021): settlement, land claims and census counts, the post office dates, the Civil War, logging, fishing and moss picking, houses and boats, the 1927 flood, the spoil-bank settlement of Canoeville, the school, churches and reunions, the silt and buried graveyards.
3. Plaquemine Post South, "Ghost riders: The Antique Cypress Putt-Putt Boat Club hosts Annual Pilgrimage to Bayou Chene", Peter Silas Pasqua, May 16, 2013 (Internet Archive copy, Apr 2, 2023): boat-only access, the pilgrimage since 2010, the camps at the site, no residents, the school, church and cemetery sites, the sanded-up way in.
4. KPEL 96.5, "Could Low Water Levels Lead to Hidden Louisiana Community in Atchafalaya Basin?", Chris Reed, October 28, 2022: repeats the 12-foot figure as what "many say"; no visit.
5. Atchafalaya National Heritage Area, "Bayou Benoit", Jude Theriot, 2023: the Bayou Benoit Boat Launch off the Bayou Benoit Levee Road and its access to Bayou Chene.
6. WAFB, "Construction underway on permanent floodgate at Bayou Chene in St. Mary Parish", July 20, 2020: the Bayou Chene floodgate south of Morgan City, which is not at the townsite.
7. USGS Loreauville sheets, 1941, 1954 and 1960, and Baton Rouge sheet, 1984 (in the historic maps above): the buildings along the bayous, the Bayou Chene Cut and its 1933 date, the oil field.
8. Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query (17 ft). Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026; the route's end is a boat ramp (slipway) in OpenStreetMap, which maps no road at the townsite. Not field-checked.

Photo and map credits

• Area base map, topo and aerial imagery: USGS The National Map (public domain).
• Historic maps: USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (public domain): Loreauville 1941, 1:62,500; Loreauville 1954, 1:62,500; Loreauville 1960, 1:62,500; Baton Rouge 1984, 1:100,000.