Customer Reviews

Houma (LA) (Images of America)

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I have reviewed quite a few titles so far in this excellent series, and this one lives up to the high standards the others have set. The author's family have been Houmeans (Houm-ites?) for several generations and his own journalistic background comes out in the easy style of the text. Joseph Hache settled in the Houma area before 1803 (as confirmed by the U.S. government in 1823), and Terrebonne became one of the most heavily settled rural areas in the world, with farmers and timbermen (mostly northern slaveholders) in the north and trappers and fishermen in the south, who had arrived from the Gulf. Houma, built at the juncture of six waterways, was incorporated in 1834 and quickly became the parish seat. The arrival of the railroad in 1872 assured cheap shipping of sugar and seafood to outside markets, and the arrival of large numbers of Protestant oil field workers in the 1920s and `30s meant frequent intermarriages and a tradition of religious tolerance. Cobb begins his pictorial coverage with the town's centennial celebration in 1934, which included the dedication of a new City Hall. Subsequent chapters cover civic and social leaders, the ordinary people of the community and the surrounding villages, the big snowstorm of 1958, the destruction caused by Hurricane Carla in 1961, the visit of President Nixon during the campaign of 1972, the construction of Higgins PT boats during World War II, and even the introduction of a shrimp-drying process to Houma in 1873 by Lee Yuen of Canton, China. The books in this series are fascinating browsing, even if you don't come from the town depicted.

I bought this book for my wife. She is from Houma. I read the book and looked at the pictures and found it interesting as regards the area, the cajun people, and especially the pictures in there of the blimp base (I have been trying to find any picture of the blimp base for a long time). My wife has gone though the whole book a number of times, but still looks through the book often. She loves this book.