Smith's Landing - Lecompte, LA

Though I could go into detail about the rich railroad history, today I want to focus on the first railroad built in central Louisiana. The Red River Railroad (Sometimes referred to as the Ralph Smith Smith Railroad) was the first railroad to be constructed west of the Mississippi River. The short and crudely constructed line was used to transport cotton and other goods that were offloaded from barges on Bayou Boeuf.

This location came to be known as Smith’s Landing and it’s surviving inconspicuous building in the town of Lecompte is widely acknowledged as the first train station to be constructed west of the Mississippi.

The route that the Red River Railroad took from Lecompte to the banks of the Red River in Alexandria has been lost to history, thanks to Union Army soldiers tearing up the line to build a levy during the Civil War. It has been noted that crews building the old Jefferson Highway between the two towns discovered artifacts from the Red River line, which has given some clues to where it may have run.

My theory from studying aerial maps of the area is that the line indeed would have logically followed the path of the Jefferson highway. It seems kind of obvious, at least to me, due to the fact that the old highway runs adjacent to the location of Smith’s Landing and it’s a straight shot towards Alexandria.

It is common practice in Louisiana to tear up a railroad, then use its old route as a road. There are many examples of this throughout the state.

It’s a natural progression: it was a railroad, then a dirt road, and finally a highway.

I would go further to speculate that the old route probably was used by both the Rock Island Railroad and the Kansas City Southern as they built lines in and from Alexandria. The Rock Island in particular could have used part of the old route when they built south towards Lecompte.

As I stated above the old Smith’s Landing Depot still stands in Lecompte at the corner of Water and Hardy streets. It is used now primarily as a hall for wedding receptions and other social events.

A trading post developed at this site on Bayou Boeuf in the early nineteenth century was known as White's Landing. The landing was well used, but the bayou was an unreliable means of transportation for planters to get their crops to market due to fluctuating water levels and narrow twisting passageways. An area engineer, Ralph Smith Smith, had experience building railroads and understood the settlers' shipping problems. He decided a railroad was the solution and ca. 1840 built the first one west of the Mississippi River from Alexandria to White's Landing. It was known as the Red River or Ralph Smith Smith Railroad and was 16 miles long. Though rather crudely built and very slow, the train could make one round trip a day and operated for over twenty years. It served its purposed well by enabling the settlers living in the Bayou Boeuf Valley to get their crops to market more efficiently. White's Landing then became known as Smith's Landing. In 1854 the landing was renamed for the famous racehorse Lecomte. The railroad was destroyed in 1864 during the Civil War. In 1881 Smith sold his railroad to the New Orleans Pacific Railway Company. Smith RR track bed and relics were discovered in Lecompte during work on Jefferson Highway.