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Also see: Florien Free
State Festival
Florien, Louisiana Before 1940
Florien is a small town about ten miles south of
Many in Sabine Parish, Louisiana on U.S. Highway 171. The location
is in the south half of the Northeast Quarter and part of the Southeast
Quarter of Section 2, Township 5 North, Range 11 West, Florien Quadrangle.
Port Arthur Avenue is the main east-west street which becomes Louisiana
Highway 474 on the west end. Louisiana Highway 473 forks off Louisiana
Highway 474 just out of town and heads south. Louisiana Highway
118 forks off US Highway 171 just north of old Florien at a point
known as "The Brown Filling Station." This is the Mount
Carmel Road. Two other roads go east from Florien, one is the old
Ash Pond Road and the other unnamed. From early on, Highway 171
was known as the Many Road north of town and the Leesville Road
south of town. Highway 474 was the Redlands Road.
Florien was established in the late nineteenth
century. The town plat was surveyed and certified 1 May 1897 by
Don Vandeguer. The name came from Florien Giauque. The post office
opened in 1908 with Willie Hall as postmaster. The first post office
was in a store on the west side of the Kansas City Southern railroad
tracks. Later a small building on a hill west of Highway 171 on
Port Arthur Avenue was built to replace the post office in the store.
It was on the left side of the street, before you reach the railroad
tracks. It was lighted with carbide gas lights. The steps up the
hill to this post office still remain, but the post office is now
on Highway 171.
Florien contained two cotton gins, one hotel with
a "cussing" parrot, one ice house, three garages (or filling
stations), one bank, seven stores, a school, a Masonic Hall, barber
shop, two churches in town, and "Old Doctor Torr's" office
in the days before 1940. The Arringtons owned one of the gins and
the Knippers owned the other. As the old farmers died off and the
young left town, the gins were closed for lack of cotton to gin.
A. C. Leach opened a store in 1897, the first store
in town. J. P. Simpson established a store in 1906. Joe Dover started
a store here in 1907, later operated by the Wrights. B. L. and S.
K. Williams opened a store in 1907. Newton F. Leach commenced a
store in 1910. D. A. Touchstone operated a store, date unknown.
Not to be forgotten was Judge Pynes' store up on Highway 171, date
opened unknown. He owned the ice house. A cafe operated in a room
on the south side of his store. All the stores are gone now. All
the stores were what would be called "mercantile stores"
as all homestead items were carried.
The construction of the Kansas City Southern Railroad
through the town occurred in 1896. The Kansas City Southern built
the train depot in 1922. This was a poor farming community and the
coming of the train provided many jobs. "Tie hacking"
became the method of earning extra money during the periods when
the farmers were at rest. The ties were hand made with a broad axe.
Many thousands of railroad ties were shipped from Florien. Large
numbers of pilings were also shipped. Filings were logs with the
bark stripped off. Few saw logs, if any, were shipped from here.
They were trucked to the mill at Fisher, Louisiana, about four miles,
or to the mill at Candy, an equal distance.
A tomato packing shed was built across the tracks
from the depot in the 1930s. This was a failure as the buyers at
the shed ripped the farmers off after they had labored to grow the
tomatoes.
The bank closed after it was robbed. Numerous people
lost all their money in that bank. The old timers, to this day,
still say, "It was an inside job." The Westbrook store
was opened in the building.
The Baptist Church was on the southwest part of
the school grounds. The Colored Church was on the north side of
the town. Ebenezer Church is about a mile northwest of town on the
old Fisher Road. Prospect Church is about two miles southwest of
town. The old Antioch Church site is at or near this church. The
Union Church is a little over two miles southeast of town. The Baptist
Brush Arbor Church site was about a mile east of Florien. The brush
arbor was replaced by a wood building. This church was called "Sit
and Grin." No sign of this church remains. These churches,
and other churches in Sabine Parish, had "big dinners on the
ground" in the 1930s. The Sundays with dinner on the ground
drew large crowds. It was difficult to determine how many came for
religion or food.
The Dover House was constructed around 1920. There
are other houses in or near the town that may be older.
The old brick school, built sometime around 1930
was the finest in the Parish (now destroyed). The WPA filled in
and leveled the grounds around the school with wheelbarrows. A bluff
remained where the fill dirt was obtained. A fence was built, using
the bluff as part of the enclosure, for a rodeo arena in the 1930s.
The bluff was used as the grandstand. People came from miles to
test their skills on the cattle furnished by the Salters.
The tent "motion picture show" came to
Florien and other towns in the Parish from time to time. It would
set up on the vacant lot west of the old bank building (Westbrook's
Store) and east of the old Holt's building in the 1930s. The price
for the show was five cents. The bank building is now gone.
Several grist mills (water or power driven), two
or three syrup mills, and two cow dipping vats were located near
the town. Chance & Mahaffey operated a sawmill near Florien
sometime in the early 1900s.
Ivey Mothershed drove a covered wagon transporting
the school children out to the nearest school bus in the 1930s.
He lived near the old Ash Pond bridge on Toro Bayou. The old Ash
Pond Road was the route from Florien to Mount Carmel in the early
1900s.
A law was enacted in the twenties or early thirties
requiring all cattle to be dipped each week. A dab of paint was
placed on each animal showing they were dipped during each period.
The cows in the area looked like polka-dot cows as a result of all
the colored dots painted on them at the dipping vat as the color
was changed at each period. All livestock were required to be dipped.
The town was filled with wagons on Saturday when
the folks from the out-reaching areas came in for supplies and to
gossip in the 1920s and 30s.
The era of the passenger train soon ended. The
mail was snatched from a grab pole in later years as the train no
longer stopped in Florien when there were no passengers from the
town. Even the freight trains grabbed messages from a loop cane
held by the depot manager. Many years later the depot building was
purchased from the Kansas City Southern Railroad and moved to the
main street of the town for other uses.
This was the town! up to the 1940s. The glory days
of Florien are gone. They now have a jail house and a mayor (John
Manasco at this time). The Sabine Free State Festival is held in
November each year. There is now a plywood mill nearby and not much
else.
Who Dug the Gold Mine
Natives of Florien believe their section of the
state has the only gold mine ever heard of in Louisiana.
Nobody knows how old the abandoned site is or who
dug the many bee-hive of tunnels which traverse the approximate
seven acres of high ground, deep in the woods west of Florien.
According to Kile Salter, a resident of rural Florien,
that section of Sabine Parish was Settled about 1882 and those early
settlers said the "mine" was old when they first came.
He said there are three legends surrounding the
hill, which towers approximately one hundred feet and is covered
with..underbrush and trees: Ancient Indians could have.dug those
tunnels, the Spaniards could have dug them when they held that section
of the state or it could have served as a hidedut for the desperate
Murrell out-law gang which operated in the Free State of Sabine
before it became a part of Louisiana.
Walls sparkle
At any rate, the walls of the tunnels sparkle here
and there wiih a golden dust: and the sandy soil topping the hill
gleams with the same substance when closely inspected.
Salter said in the early thirties, carloads of
the gold-flecked dirt was shipped out of state by a company working
the site and that some people baked and chipped some of the soil
with the hope of getting enough "dust" to do some good.
Salter said legend also has it that a room filled
with a fortune in gold is supposedly sealed off from one of the
tunnels. Through the years various prospectors have dug down into
the hill crest as deep as seventy five feet in.the hope of penetrating
the treasure room. Nobody has yet succeeded.
Area folks believe the flecks to be gold dust but
as to the who, when or why of the tunnels, which are over a hundred
years old, the mystery remains a mystery.
Source: Sabine Parish Library; authors: Florien,
Louisiana Before 1940 by Samuel J. Touchstone and Who Dug
the Gold Mine by Dorothy Seals
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