18th AND 19TH CENTURY SETTLEMENT
The area now identified as Ouachita Parish had been occupied by aborigines since pre-historic times. Early European explorers included DeSoto (1542), La Salle (1682), and Bienville (1703). But it remained for Don Juan Filhoil with a commission from the Spanish governor to establish the first permanent settlement on the banks of the Ouachita. When Filhoil arrived in 1783, he named the site for the outpost Prairie des Canots for the Indian and trapper canoes gathered there. The military post was later named Ft. Miro in honor of the Spanish governor of Louisiana.
A colonization scheme formulated by the Spanish government enticed the Marquis de Maison Rouge to establish a settlement further north near the conflux of the Ouachita River and Bayou Bartholomew, the site of the present town of Sterlington. But this settlement lost its position as a rival for the seat of parish government after Filhoil laid out a plot in 1811 for a town on his plantation adjacent to Ft. Miro.
An exciting event occurred at the townsite in May, 1819, one which was to have a two-fold effect on the 400 inhabitants of Ft. Miro. The event was the docking of the James Monroe, the first steamboat to ply the Ouachita to this northerly point.
The ensuing excitement effected a village name change to “Monroe.” And for nearly a century the Ouachita River and steam powered boats combined to form a great highway of commerce and transportation for the region.
Overland transportation systems developed throughout the territory during the 1800’s. The earlier Indian trails often became bridle paths. In 1839 a road was cut through from Monroe to Vicksburg, but it was passable only in dry weather. Stage coach service was initiated in 1849. During this era a road was established westward through the hills beyond the river; another went northward toward Arkansas. These westerly roads later became wagon roads bringing caravans of wagons from Jackson and Claiborne Parishes to river trade centers such as the former town of Trenton, two miles north of the present town of West Monroe. But it would be the advent of the Vicksburg to Shreveport railroad in the 1880’s which would provide the communication link between the east and west portions of the Ouachita Parish. In 1853 the state legislature granted the first charter for the construction of the Vicksburg, Texas, and the Pacific Railroad through North Louisiana. The first passenger service from Vicksburg to Monroe was in 1860. The tracks were destroyed by Union forces in the Civil War but were reconstructed and replaced in service by 1870. In 1882 the railroad bridge spanning the Ouachita was opened. It contained wood planking for vehicular and pedestrian circulation. Rail passenger service from Monroe to Shreveport commenced on July 10, 1884.
Ironically, the installation of the railroad service initiated the demise of two regional institutions, the town of Trenton on the west side of the river and the steamboat industry. Trenton, which had been platted into town lots in 1851, declined with the location of the railroad two miles south. Cottonport, a tiny community at the bridgehead on the west side of the Ouachita, changed its name to West Monroe and eventually developed into an important business and industrial community.
Steamboat traffic on the Ouachita, which had begun in 1819, yielded to the speed and flexibility of railroad service. The glamorous steamboating era of nearly a century of luxurious but sometimes tragic travel came to an end in the 1910’s.