RAILROAD

BRINGS PROSPERITY TO WESTERN LOUISIANA

Long gone are the days when DeRidder had four railroads and ten passenger trains per day. With completion of the railroad in 1897 prosperity, population and industry were brought to the area. People moved from area rivers to towns and villages along the railroad lines. Agricultural products and cattle could be shipped to distant markets.

It was the vision of Arthur Stilwell that brought economic progress to the area via the railroad and interaction with the outside world.

Stilwell was a colorful New York Native who had transportation in his blood. He was the grandson of Hamblin Stilwell, one of the builders of the Erie Canal, an active organizer of the Western Union Telegraph System and the New York Central Railroad, and a friend to Commodore Vandebilt.

Stilwell built over 2,300 miles of railroad line; founded at least forty communities of differing sizes; and organized 41 companies. He also authored books, plays and music. After successful careers in printing and sales, Stilwell migrated west. Eventually he settled in Kansas City, where he organized a home mortgage business which thrived.

With their Kansas City ventures a success, Stilwell and his partner turned their attention southward. By August 1893 their Kansas City, Nevada and Gulf Railway had reached Joplin, Missouri. However, Stilwell's actions prove that he already intended to extend the new line to the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1892 he purchased a short road connecting Texarkana to Little River, Arkansas. In October 1893 another link was added to the chain when Stilwell purchased a railway connecting Joplin to Sulphur Springs, Arkansas. Now reorganized, the company became the Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf Railway (the P&G) and extended on to the Arkansas Town of Siloam Springs. Stilwell soon revealed his ultimate goal to be the Sabine Pass area on the Texas Gulf coast.

By 1893 Stilwell needed financial help. The financial panic of that year had dried up construction funds and sent many railroads into receiverships. Stilwell's road was also in trouble, but he got a "hunch" which eventually saved the day. That hunch was that he should go to Holland to raise money to extend the railway through Arkansas to Shreveport.

The entrepreneur's Kansas City business partners and Philadelphia financiers probably thought the man crazy, but in February 1894 he sailed for Europe. Once in Holland, he rekindled an acquaintance with Jan (or John) DeGoeijen, a coffee merchant whom he had met during a previous European vacation. The result of that meeting was that DeGoeijen became an agent for Stilwell's company and soon succeeded in selling $3 million worth of railroad stock to his countrymen.

After returning to the Unites States, Stilwell resumed construction through Arkansas. Trackage (approximately a mile a day) was built in sections, and multiple segments were built simultaneously. As a result, the again renamed Kansas City, Shreveport and Gulf Railway reached the Caddo Parish seat.

Shreveport almost immediately began feeling the financial benefits of the road's 1895 arrival. Business boomed as well as freight business due to the necessity of more cars in which to ship the area's cotton crop northward.

Stilwell stopped construction at Shreveport while he evaluated options. One possibility was to purchase the Houston, East and West Texas Line, which already connected Shreveport to Galveston via East Texas and Houston, The other choice was to continue building south to Sabine Pass. By purchasing the Texas line he could establish an immediate connection with the Gulf at Galveston, while a western Louisiana line would tap the still untouched virgin forests that still existed there. Through Stilwell's persuasion, the Dutch investors opted to abandon the Galveston plan, thus ensuring the development of west central Louisiana. It was the deciding factor in the Kansas City, Shreveport and Gulf Railway pressing southward from Shreveport. Funding came from multiple sources, including the Dutch investors and profits from townsite development and freight carried over the line. Subsidies from towns and parishes along the proposed route were also an important source. It was common practice for areas seeking railroads to entice the companies with such donations, and the railroad lines were not above demanding them. Unhesitatingly, residents of DeSoto and Sabine parishes voted to tax themselves to pay their share. However, Vernon Parish citizens approved the subsidy by only four votes.

The 215 miles between Shreveport and Port Arthur, Texas (the new city Stilwell Built - and named for himself - to terminate his line near Sabine Pass) were covered in two years. The 556 mile line between Kansas City and the new Texas town was completed in 1897 resulting in increased prosperity all along the route.

Nowhere, however, did it have a greater impact than in western Louisiana. Until word of the railroad reached the DeRidder area, its site was a pine forest and homestead of Calvin Shirley. As right of way clearing and grading moved southward from Leesville, residents of northwestern Calcasieu Parish (to which Beauregard then belonged) became convinced that a depot would be built on Shirley's land. The locals convinced Shirley to subdivide and sell his 160 acres. Construction of buildings for the new town soon began, and eventually, the railroad erected the longed-for depot.

Jan DeGoeijen had become so intrigued about the building of the railroad in western Louisiana that he decided to change careers from coffee to railroads. He kept an office in Amsterdam, Holland and there was a map in his office showing Kansas City in the north and the Gulf in the South. Occasionally, Mr. DeGoeijen would be asked to name a place which might be of interest in the future which was located along the railroad. DeGoeijen had a sister-in-law named Ella de Ridder DeGoijen. She was a beautiful girl from Belgium, and was a favorite relative of Jan DeGoeijen. Thus, he named our city "DeRidder" (the knight) in honor of his sister-in-law.

DeRidder was incorporated as a town in 1903, and its continued growth resulted in its designation as a city in 1916.

As DeRidder's story shows, the railroad "...drew population, development, and industry like a magnet" (Sten D. Smith, A Good Home for a Poor Man). The most significant business was the lumber industry. Sawmills appeared almost as soon as the rails were laid, and their presence drastically changed the physical and cultural landscape. Each lumber concern established its own company town to house the myriad of workers who followed the industry from place to place. A portion of these workers were African-American, thus changing the ethnic mix of an area which had previously lacked large numbers of blacks.

Sadly, financial problems caused Arthur Stilwell to lose control of the Kansas City Southern in 1899. More tragic, however, was the loss of the prosperity brought to west central Louisiana by the lumber industry when clear cutting eventually destroyed the region's virgin timber stands and the companies moved on.

A legacy of the lumber industry is the present KCS Depot built in 1927. Located in DeRidder's historic district, the old depot now houses the Beauregard Museum and the Lois Loftin Doll Museum. Parked near the old Kansas City Southern depot is a stainless steel caboose, dated 1968, and is one of 42 stainless steel cabooses built by the Darby Corporation between 1964 and 1970.

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Ref: Patricia L. Duncan, Div of Historic Preservation, LA Dept. of Culture,

Recreation and Tourism

Provided by: Velmer Lenora Smith, DeRidder Historian