Charenton Beach: Thousands flocked to Grand Lake resort

By COLIN MURPHEY
Several prominent residents of the Franklin area recently were afforded a look back into history during a time when St. Mary Parish was the site of one of the area’s most bustling social hotspots.
And while nothing remains of the Charenton Beach Resort but memories and a few mementos, there has been an effort on the part of some locals to preserve photos and artifacts from the gathering spot that at one point drew thousands of people during the hot summer months of Louisiana.
During a recent meeting of the Franklin Rotary Club, members listened to a presentation from one local historian who said during the resort’s heyday, thousands of people would descend upon the idyllic location during the summer holidays to swim in the refreshing waters of Grand Lake.
Some of the only evidence the resort ever existed was on display at the presentation in the form of photo reproductions and a few architectural remains with names of those who attended holiday events carved into pieces of weathered wood planks that made up part of the main dance hall and other buildings.
According to local historian Mary Bailey, Charenton Beach was a major tourist draw in the 1920s and 30s.
“At this time in history, it was the place to be in Southern Louisiana,” Bailey said. “There was a dancehall and a restaurant. There were bathhouses and cabins. That was the beginning of it all.”
Bailey said the resort, for her, represented a unique time in southern Louisiana’s history before the hustle and bustle of modern life made such things as a dancehall and pristine waters to swim in merely vestiges of an uncomplicated era.
“It was a much, much simpler time,” Bailey said.
Bailey also read an excerpt from an article in the Daily Iberian on an unknown date but she said it must have been published, “years ago.” It was not immediately known who gave the quote or who wrote the article.
The excerpt read, “Grand Lake was a large and beautiful body of water in those days and a wonderful place for swimming, boating and fishing. Many area citizens remember the beach. Conversation often develops today about memorable dinners that took place there. Perhaps the best remembered and most talked about was one of the dances that was held in 1935. July Fourth was the big day out at Charenton beach. There were 700 dance couples in that dancehall with no air conditioning.”
While nothing remains at the actual site of the Charenton Beach resort and very little history was documented about the facility, there have been a few historical notations located by the Banner-Tribune.
According to the Louisiana Dancehalls website, there exists one quote from a Wanda Viguerie Bailey stating, “Dancers kicked the bottles off the floor while dancing to keep them off the bandstand. Every year, the dancefloor would be damaged by the pulse of water from the Atchafalaya Basin spillway. The floor would be warped in such a way that the dancers would learn to dance with the grain in order to move smoothly.”
Another reference to the fabled resort in Charenton, comes from a book originally published in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writer’s Project. The project was developed by the now defunct Works Progress Administration (WPA) which was the largest and most ambitious of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s domestic programs known as the New Deal to get the country out of the Great Recession.
A WPA Guide was written for each state to document local culture, history and heritage. And while the book contains over 700 pages of Louisiana’s history from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and from Acadiana to Northern Louisiana, there is one brief mention of the Charenton Beach Resort.
The book states, “Right from Charenton across Bayou Teche on Indian Bend, a graveled road to Charenton Beach, a popular bathing resort on Grand Lake, once called Chitimacha Lake. On the beach are a restaurant and dancing pavilion and tourists cabins.”
In conclusion, Bailey said it would take one of the most cataclysmic weather events in the history of the country to signal the death knell of the iconic Charenton Beach Resort. Ironically, it would be one of the features that provided so much entertainment to beachgoers that would ultimately be the resort’s undoing, water.
“The beginning of the end for Charenton Beach was the flood of 1927,” Bailey said. “It was a terrible flood. So the state of Louisiana and the Corp of Engineers got together and started the Atchafalaya Basin Levy Project. The project was completed in 1939 and when they drew the lines for the levees, Charenton Beach was on the inside of the levee. Once the levees were complete, the flood waters just got higher and higher and that was the beginning of the end. But it really was a grand place.”