Big Bend is located along Louisiana State Highway 451, adjacent to Bayou des Glaises in a loop through northeastern Avoyelles Parish, between Hamburg and Moreauville. The community was settled in the 19th century by people of both French and English extraction. The economic structure of the Big Bend community was linked to Bayou des Glaises. Rich, alluvial soils along the waterway were ideal for farming, and an abundance of wildlife, in and around the bayou, supplemented food supplies between harvests. Pomme de Terre and Grassy Lake, two current state wildlife management areas, attest to the importance of wildlife around Big Bend. The dynamics of the community changed at the turn of the 20th century with the development of the railroad.In the mid-nineteenth century, Big Bend was among the most prosperous communities in Avoyelles Parish with many thriving plantations and cotton and moss gins. Through the intercession of Senator Pierre Couvillion in 1840, Bayou des Glaises was cleared of canebrakes which made the waterway more navigable between the mouth, on the Atchafalaya at Simmesport along Hamburg, Big Bend, Kleinwood, Rexmere, Bordelonville, Borodino, Moreauville, Longbridge to the port docks on Bayou Rouge at Cottonport. Steamboats and barges transported imported goods for local farmers and exported cotton and corn for
sale in New Orleans.In 1896 william Edenborn, President of American Steel and Wire Co., began construction of a railroad line from Shreveport to Alexandria that was completed in May, 1902. Mr. Edenborn then organized the Louisiana Railway and Navigation Co. (LR&N) in 1903 to continue the line to New Orleans. The railroad was constructed through Mansura, Moreauville and Big Bend by 1905. The line then continued on several miles ending at Naples (depot) a bristling thriving town that was washed away in the 1927 Flood in the area known as Water Valley. In 1906, a railroad bridge was built across Bayou des Glaises and section crew was established for opening and closing the bridge. The completed line was completed from Angola to New Orleans in October, 1906. Byron F. Lemoine built the present Adam Ponthieu Store and Big Bend Post Office after the 1927 Flood destroyed the store built circa 1900 by Thomas H. Carruth, In 1946, Adam Ponthieu purchased the old country store and relocated it a short distance to its present site on Sarto Lane.
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