re: Did Huey P Long block Alexandria from being a major metro?

Your boss is correct somewhat. Huey did reroute the road but I think it was maybe Pineville's mayor who he fell out with.

I talked to an old guy who worked for the then "Highway Commission" under Huey. He said Huey would come out to the site and make them reroute roads to make sure they went by the most houses throughout the countryside to benefit folks who had no way of getting hardly anywhere.

He said a road that could run straight from point A to point B would end up looking like a coiled snake if it helped some old farm families gain access.

If you notice a lot of LA roads seem to be crooked for no reason, there's your answer. Huey built more roads than any governor in history. The problem is, since Huey, little maintenance has been done of many of them.

It was Melville and Hwy 71. If you look at Hwy 71 south of Bunkie and how it bypassed Melville, it looks like someone drew it with a straight edge.

When I worked around Louisiana politics, they had an old consultant tell me, “The first rule of Louisiana politics is to reward your friends and punish your enemies.” And there’s no better example of the implementation of this rule than what Huey Long did to the tiny town of Melville.

Now, Melville sits on the banks of the Atchafalaya River, and during the last century—the early part of the last century, it was a booming town. There were hotels, there were theaters. There’s a lot going on in Melville. And Huey Long came to campaign for the 1928 governor’s election there. And the folks there didn’t really like him. And so, they ridiculed him, they jeered him. And he made a promise to them, “I am never going to forget Melville, and you’ll pay for this.”

Well, they did, and in a big way. Well, Long won the 1928 election, and he did not forget his promise to Melville. He built a highway, Highway 71. It’s still there today. Now, the main corridor between Shreveport and Baton Rouge was a highway that passed right through Melville. And so, if he wanted to improve the route, it would have made sense to take the existing road and improve it. Huey Long decided to build a brand new highway right through a swamp. It took more time, it increased the miles from Baton Rouge to Shreveport by about 10 or 12 miles. But what it did is completely bypass Melville. There was no reason to go through Melville anymore.

Eight decades later, the town does not thrive. There are no theaters there, there are no hotels there. Huey Long’s promise to never forget Melville and to destroy it economically did work. And certainly, Huey did not care about his image. He cared about power, and attaining it and keeping it. And he was the master of it.

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Houma

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Not sure about Alexandria, but Houma was left out of the interstate system on purpose

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Houma was left out of the interstate system on purpose

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A HOTBED OF HOUMASEXUALS

AMIRITE

LA 71 is damn near a straight line from Bunkie to Krotz Springs and the US 190 bridge. I don't see how Melville was "bypassed".

Now, I've never understood how frigin LA 10 didn't get a bridge across the Atchafalaya right there at Melville! That looks like someone was trying to screw them over.

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And Vicksburg has houses that rival uptown Nola. Very nice old houses but run down

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Many small cities in the Deep South are this way... I can't remember all the names, but if you drive from Atlanta to Troy State, or to Fort Benning / Phenix City there are a lot of towns like that. Hattiesburg is like that to some extent.

No. Major metropolitan areas don’t become such just because a highway was built. There has to be some industry that grows there that attracts employees and other services.

The indian mounds were created from dirt used from the old nat. Huey didnt want to pay the contractors to haul it off, citing he only paid them to dig the holes.

He immediatedly consecrated them as indian mounds. It was understood at the time to be a symbolic gesture, though few knew it was a politically and econimically shrewd one.

Old BR people have always known this.

To this day people believe the three tiny piles of grown over dirt are actual indian mounds.

Indian mounds are massive. A child might have trouble getting to the top.

It's like a meme from the 1920's that has been scribed by over educated idiots as truth.




TLDR: Huey was not someone to depend on when the check came and no native americans were involved in the "building" of the mounds

Eta: there are documents contempary to the time in the LSU historical library- available for anyone with any type of identification- to review.

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A HOTBED OF HOUMASEXUALS AMIRITE

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Well they did have a gay serial killer on the loose from 1997-2006.