St. Charles Parish history

The police jury, although it was not legally called by that name until 1811, was established by the same legislature that divided the territory of Orleans into civil parishes.

The police jury was given the power to sue in 1817, and the supreme court held some years later that the police jury could be sued as "necessarily implied and incidental to express powers granted".

Another courthouse was constructed in 1826; one hundred years later, the police jury voted an $85,000 bond issue to remodel this building.

In 1853, a major yellow fever epidemic struck New Orleans, and its effects were felt along the German Coast.

On the heels of the Yellow Fever Epidemic in 1861, Louisiana seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy.

The largest of these was the Louisiana Cypress Lumber Company mill established by Joseph Cornelius Rathborne in 1889.

In 1907 the first sawmill in the parish opened in Taft, the home of the Colonial Dairy Farm, one of the largest dairies in the state.

In 1908, the Louisiana Cypress Company began to harvest cypress in the area.

Some of this land was in St Charles and in June 1911, George Cousin (born in Alsace- Lorraine) signed an agreement with Rathborne and it was at this site that Cousin’s Camp was established and served as home base for the workers.

In 1914, Destrehan Plantation was sold to the Mexican Petroleum Company, and it became the first of the River Road plantations to change from an agricultural to an industrial economic base.

Henry “DeDe” Friloux was educated in Ama schools and attended Soule’ Business College in New Orleans before arriving in Norco in 1924 to begin working for New Orleans Refining Company.

In 1928, test pilings were driven, and a controlled outlet for the flooding Mississippi River was created, aptly named the Bonnet Carre Spillway.

Learning of the interest of other parish residents to have natural gas, in September of 1931 Friloux and his investors quickly organized Norco Gas and Fuel, Inc., to distribute natural gas to east bank residents.

In January 1937 one of the greatest of all recorded floods started its way down the Mississippi River.

In recent years (1938) the police jury has received authority to purchase tear gas, tear gas bombs, and machine guns for the use of the sheriff and law enforcement officers, who must account to the jury for the equipment placed in their charge.