One of the few survivors later described how he’d clung to an upturned cypress tree and shut his ears against the screams of those drowning in the swamp. When the storm cleared on October 1, Frenier, Ruddock, and Napton had been entirely destroyed-homes flattened, buildings demolished, and miles of railway tracks washed away. Altogether, close to 300 people in Louisiana died, with almost 60 in Frenier and Ruddock alone. Many of the townsfolk sought refuge in the railroad depot, which collapsed and killed 25 people. In Frenier, where Julia lived, the storm surge rose 13 feet, and the winds howled at 125 miles an hour. That all changed on September 29, 1915, when a massive hurricane swept in from the Caribbean. They had no roads, no doctors, and no electricity, but had managed to carve out cohesive and self-reliant communities. The railroad was the towns' lifeline, bringing groceries from New Orleans and hauling away the logs and cabbages as far as Chicago. One of the most memorable (and disturbing) went: "One day I’m going to die and take the whole town with me."īack when Brown was alive at the turn of the 20th century, the towns of Ruddock, Frenier, and Napton were prosperous settlements clustered on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain, sustained by logging the centuries-old cypress trees and farming cabbages in the thick black soil. She was known for her charms and her curses, as well as for singing eerie songs with her guitar on her porch. Brown, sometimes also called Julie White or Julia Black, is described in local legend as a voodoo priestess who lived at the edge of the swamp and worked with residents of the town of Frenier. The boaters who enter the swamps face two main threats, aside from sunstroke and dehydration: the alligators, who mostly lurk just out of view, and the broken logs that float through the muck, remnants of the days when the swamp was home to the now-abandoned logging town of Ruddock.īut some say that anyone entering the swamp should beware a more supernatural threat-the curse of local voodoo queen Julia Brown. In the summer the water is pea-green, covered in tiny leaves and crawling with insects that hide in the shadows of the ancient, ghost-gray cypress trees. The Manchac wetlands, about a half hour northwest of New Orleans, are thick with swamp ooze.
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