Former sugar-cane mill was ‘home’ for some
Ralph Miller talks about the time he spent working at Caldwell Sugars Co-op Tuesday afternoon at the site of the old mill, just north of Thibodaux.Abby Tabor/Staff
Published: Wednesday, December 29, 2010 at 11:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, December 29, 2010 at 11:01 a.m.
- Editor’s note: One in a series on local institutions, traditions that no longer exist.
THIBODAUX — Caldwell Plantation Road is a poorly maintained gravel path off La. 308 that sees little traffic. Decrepit houses, invaded by tall yellowed grass, and idle tractors, some that appear to have been undisturbed for years, line the road that once led to a booming business.
“I never thought I’d see the day,” said Ralph Miller, staring at the remains of Caldwell Sugars Co-op, a once sprawling sugar-cane mill just north of Thibodaux. Today, a lone gray smoke stack stands like a sentinel over the mill’s crumbled remains.
Miller, 75, worked at Caldwell Co-op from 1955 to 1965, 10 “hard years but some of the best years of my life.” He was in charge of payroll.
Caldwell Co-op was formed in 1946 after 23 sugar-cane farmers pledged more than $302,000 and bought Caldwell Sugars’ assets, including a refinery and four plantations.
The Co-op was in operation for 55 years. It closed in 2002.
When Miller stares at the bulldozed remnants, he said he is filled with memories of what used to be there.
Workers lived on the plantation property. The entire area, Miller said, was a self-sufficient, contained community.
“Everybody was dependent on each other,” he said. “It was just like a city of its own. I just hated to see it closed.”
Workers were provided with free housing, which helped stretch Miller’s $68 biweekly paycheck. There was also a company store.
Trips into Thibodaux were rare, he said, because the workers and their families had most of what they needed on the property.
“It was just so well coordinated,” he said.
In January 2000, members of Caldwell, Glenwood Cooperative in Napoleonville and St. James Sugar Cooperative in St. James merged, creating South Louisiana Sugars Cooperative. The board decided to upgrade Glenwood and St. James and shut down the Caldwell mill, according to a 2002 Daily Comet article.
The closure left Lafourche Parish with only two sugar-cane mills, Lafourche Sugars in Thibodaux and Raceland Raw Sugar.
Caldwell was, one local history professor said, one of the last holdouts of a culture that has slowly faded in Louisiana.
“You have to look at the decline as a trend that’s been going on possibly since the introduction of sugar in Louisiana back in the early 19th century,” said Paul Leslie, a retired Nicholls State University history professor. “It’s a trend based on consolidation.”
In 1977, Lafourche was home to six sugar mills. In 1978, that number dropped to five; and in 1980, three, according to the same Daily Comet article.
“This is a trend that has hit the automobile industry, too,” Leslie said. “Bigness became a way by which to improve efficiency. (Caldwell) just found themselves in a bind. They couldn’t find enough cane to justify their existence.”
The mill’s closure still surprised some.
“Even though we left there, I never thought I’d see the day when they closed it,” said Ray Boudreaux, who lived on the planation property for the first 18 years of his life. “It was a good life. It was nothing easy, but it was a good life.”
Boudreaux, whose father worked at the mill “basically until he died,” said sugar dominated day-to-day life.
“When I was a kid, that’s all we knew,” he said. “We didn’t think of any other kind of work. At one time, we had almost everyone in the family working there.”
He said the mill workers — his neighbors — helped make a vibrant, friendly community.
Hundreds of workers lived in individual houses and in a larger boarding house that no longer exists.
“Everybody knew one another. People were people then,” he said. “I got a house here and I got a house in New Orleans, and I’d trade it all to get back.