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NHP Lake Charles Louisiana By blade2k5 & Papab2000
Map Details and Information
18th and 19th centuries-Settlement and incorporation
While several American Indian tribes are known to have lived in the area occupied by present-day Lake Charles, the first European settlers arrived in the 1760s.
In 1781 Martin LeBleu and his wife, Dela Marion, of Bordeaux, France were the first recorded Europeans to settle in the area now known as the LeBleu Settlement. Charles Sallier married LeBleu's daughter, Catherine LeBleu; the Salliers built their home on the beach in what is current-day Lake Charles. By 1860 the area become known as Charles Town in Sallier's honor.
The Rio Hondo, which flowed through Lake Charles, was later called Quelqueshue, a Native American term meaning "Crying Eagle". Transliterated through French, this became the name of Calcasieu Parish. On March 7, 1861, Lake Charles was officially incorporated as the town of Charleston, Louisiana.
Industrial growth and the Civil War
The city's growth was fairly slow until Captain Daniel Goos, a Frisian by birth, came to the city in 1855. Goos established a lumber mill and schooner dock, now called Goosport. He promoted a profitable trade with Texan and Mexican ports by sending his schooner downriver into the Gulf of Mexico. Until the arrival of Goos, a man named Jacob Ryan dominated the lumber industry. Between 1817 and 1855, timber sales from longleaf pine and bald cypress remained the city's primary source of economic revenue.
Jacob Ryan convinced the state government to move the parish seat to Lake Charles from its former location at Marion, a settlement about eight miles upriver. Later that year, Ryan and Samuel Kirby transferred the parish courthouse and jail by barge to the then-named Charleston. Six years after the city was incorporated, dissatisfaction over the name Charleston arose; on March 16, 1867, Charleston, Louisiana, was renamed and incorporated as the town of Lake Charles.
By the time of the U.S. Civil War, many Americans from the North, along with a large influx of continental Europeans and Jews, had come to settle the area. Attitudes toward slavery in Lake Charles were mixed, as slavery was secondary to business interests. In fact, fewer than five percent of the population were slaves.
Many citizens became involved in the war. Young men from some local families served in the Confederate Army. It is also known that some local families supported the cause of the Union.
After the Civil War
In the years following the Civil War, Lake Charles regained its status as a lumbering center. Especially in the 1880s, the city saw an increase in population and economic demand largely due to an innovative advertising campaign by J.B. Watkins; thanks to this campaign, the city's population grew four-hundred percent during this decade.
Using the pine wood from the city's mills, construction of large Victorian mansions transformed Lake Charles during the 1890s. Carpenters competed with verve to outbuild each other with their use of elaborate fretwork and decoration. The area of present-day Lake Charles located just east of downtown is known as the Charpentier District from the French word for carpenter and features houses from this era.
Twentieth century
The courthouse donated by Ryan and Kirby was replaced numerous times; such historical courthouses include a two-story cypress structure in 1872 and a brick structure in 1890. The 1890 courthouse, along with most of downtown Lake Charles, was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1910. Two months after the Louisiana legislature divided the former Imperial Calcasieu parish into the current parishes of Allen, Beauregard, Cameron, Jefferson Davis and Calcasieu, the presently-used, historic Calcasieu Courthouse was completed in 1912.
After World War II, Lake Charles experienced industrial growth with the onset of the petrochemical refining industries. The city grew to a high of some 80,000 people in the early 1980s, but with local economic recession, the population declined. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 71,757.
Present day
The destructive force of Hurricane Rita. Looking down the remains of the lakefront boardwalk toward the damaged Harrah's Lake Charles Casino property.
Lake Charles suffered extensive damage from Hurricane Rita, which struck the city as a Category 3 storm early September 24, 2005. On September 22, Mayor Randy Roach ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city, and approximately ninety percent of the residents left. Evacuees were asked to not return for 48 hours, due to wind and flood damage. There was extensive damage to the city's electrical grid, and many areas did not have power restored for up to three weeks.
As part of the city's recovery from Hurricane Rita, elected officials proposed a plan to renovate the downtown area to make it more attractive and pedestrian-friendly. A primary concern for the downtown revitalization was to include quality and affordable housing. To fund this proposal, officials proposed a parish-wide ballot initiative to increase sales and property taxes for 20 years. This was voted on and rejected by residents on July 15, 2006.
On June 20, 2006, a Citgo petroleum plant located in Sulphur, Louisiana released between 15,000 and 18,000 barrels of oil into the Calcasieu Ship Channel. The United States Coast Guard was called in to contain the spilled oil, which had by this time flowed down the Calcasieu River. Because of the disaster, the Coast Guard had to close many waterways, including the Calcasieu River Channel and a one-mile stretch of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. The Port of Lake Charles remained closed for some time after the accident due to contamination.
Oil prices surged to over $74 per barrel in part due to the Citgo spillage. The Calcasieu Refining Co., which normally processes 76,500 barrels of oil a day, was working at low levels for weeks after the incident.
Map Specifics
Map Type: Real World
Region map size: Map is configured for 49 large city tiles and is 7x7 in size.
config.bmp size: included with zip file
Dependencies: Either SC4 Mapper or SC4 Terraformer for importing.
Maps were created by taking 1/3 Arc USGS DEM elevation data.
Install/Uninstall Instructions: Can be found in the readme provided.
Credits
blade2k5 - Original map creation, scaling, importing. SC4TF modification.
papab2000 - Original map creation, scaling, importing. SC4TF modification.
Check out more maps by blade2k5 and NHP
Any comments and feedback welcomed. Thanks for looking and enjoy.
