ANCHORAGE
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ANCHORAGE |
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NAME: Anchorage COUNTY: West Baton Rouge Parish (not County) ROADS: 2WD GRID: 7 CLIMATE: Mild, moderately wet winters; moderately hot, humid summers with almost daily afternoon convective showers. BEST TIME TO VISIT: Any time. |
COMMENTS:
Current residents: Zero. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River on (West) River Rd. (La. SR 986) ca. 3 miles north of Port Allen, or 1.5 miles south of jct. with US Hwy. 190 (at the Huey P. Long Bridge) and directly across the river from Baton Rouge. From La. 986, visitors may see remnants of the wooden timber support trestle for railroad approach to ferry landing on Mississippi River, where railroad cars were ferried across the river from 1909 to 1947, when the Huey P. Long Bridge (US 190) was opened to RR traffic. One may locate the former trestle remains by watching on the west (non-River) side of the River Road (La. 986) for the RR tracks (still in use) which come to an abrupt end at a bumper stop just before the old trestle crossing. By walking on the levee, one may also see traces of the old railroad bed in the levee leading down to the former ferry landing. A small oil refinery now occupies a lage portion of the site of the old Anchorage Plantation. REMAINS: Remains of RR trestle over River Rd., traces of road bed in levee, plantation lanes, fields. Other antebellum structures and remains exist nearby on adjacent plantations. |
| A river boat anchorage from the 1790s and a railroad terminus from the 1949s for crossing the river to Baton Rouge on the ferry "Sunny South." From Baton Rouge sugar and cotton were shipped to the port of New Orleans and beyond. Part of Iberville Plantation until the 1850s when Anchorage Plantation was partitioned out by Adolph Dubroca. Sugar was and still is the major crop of the area. Anchorage on the Mississippi River was also the eastern terminus of the Baton Rouge, Grosse Tete, and Opelousas RR, which was absorbed by Southern Pacific in the 1870s, another economic victim of Northern so-called Reconstruction. In 1909, the steam ferry "Sunny South" was replaced by a train car ferry which tediously ferried RR cars across the river to and from Baton Rouge until 1947 when the Huey Long Bridge was completed. Submitted by: David B. Crider |
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