GOLDEN MEADOW - Down the Bayou history and culture

The oil and fishing Capitol of Lafourche is Golden Meadow! 50mph on the Backroad!! You’ve been warned!
Host: Kyle Crosby
Camera/Editor: Michael Malley
Coordinator: Samantha Rohr
Transcript:
We have reached Golden Meadow, which is the last incorporated town on Bayou Lafourche. Native tribes of the Chitamacha, Choctaw, and Houmas nations were in the area for centuries until European arrival. In 1842, the first settlers to the area traveled by boat from Natchez, Mississippi, and arrived at the lower reaches of the bayou. These early settlers had last names like Callais, Cheramie, Griffin, Barker, and Williams, among others. In fact, most historians say that all of the Cheramies in Louisiana can trace their ancestry to Golden Meadow, but it wasn’t originally called that.
In 1901, a Callais man sold their land to a “Yankee” from Michigan, who then dug a drainage canal to farm. Because of this, the area of about 8 homes became known as Yankee Canal, until about 1915.
My maw maw and paw paw used to say it’s Golden Meadows and if you ask any older person here they’ll likely say the same, that it’s plural. However, the name stems from the Golden Meadow Development Company, so it likely is singular instead of plural, but there are a couple of theories as to the name origins.
The original settlers saw the vast growth of yellow wildflowers in the low marsh prairies. These flowers are often mistakenly referred to as goldenrods but are actually the common butterweed.
Some people believe that the Acadians or Cajun to settle the area of South Lafourche came down from the upper regions of Bayou Lafourche. A few, perhaps, but the vast majority of the Cajun population came from the South. Marked by three devastating hurricanes in 1893, 1909, and 1915, the Acadians, Native Americans, Africans, and more along the coast would retreat to settle further North.
The combination of these 3 major hurricanes caused a rapid increase in the population of Golden Meadow. Now with the majority being French-speaking Catholics, the Diocese of New Orleans ordered a church to be built that could accommodate the major fishing port, so in 1916 St. Yves Parish was established and changed to Our Lady of Prompt Succor a year later. With a major sector of Louisiana's coastal fishing fleet now located in Golden Meadow, the village became a major seafood selling and processing center for the state.
One of the more historical locations is obviously the school. The Golden Meadow High School building is on the National Register of Historical Places and is in the Classical Revival Style. It was completed in 1931 with many additions that followed, but with the restructuring of the school system, it became a junior high and is now a middle school.
These public schools were not always open to all people unfortunately. Until 1964 in Louisiana, Native Americans were restricted from attending public schools, so Lafourche Parish set up a "settlement school" in Golden Meadow just South of the corporation limit.
At that location resided a large community of Houma peoples, numbering 175 by 1911 and 300 by 1940, which was about 1/4 of the total Houma population at the time. Some families of the Houma
Some families of the Houma nation migrated east from Terrebonne Parish to Bayou Lafourche after the storm of 1915. Others remained in multiple smaller villages interspersed in the marshes. One in particular was named Fala and it was located on the northwestern shore of Catfish Lake in the marshes directly west of Golden Meadow. To get to the school, children first boated across the lake to the back of town and then walked several miles to the schoolhouse. A small group of Houma lived in palmetto huts south of Yankee Canal on the East Bank of the bayou near the Texaco oil storage tanks.
Private barges ferried citizens between bayou banks in the early days of Golden Meadow, the most heavily used was between the high school and part of town known as Pointeau-Saucisse or simply, The Pwant. This is the spot chosen for a pontoon bridge and then the 1970s steel lift bridge in use today.
Golden Meadow and the South Lafourche region have preserved the Cajun and Creole culture through so many disasters one loses count. The bayou region is also so stranger to myths and legends even some of the town names are steeped in legendary tales.