Leaving Leeville: Losing a Coastal Community
Running time 1:34
Windell Curole knows what it means to see a community washed away. He’s seen it. On this tour of Leeville, Louisiana, Windell explains how storms and rising sea level have forced people to retreat inland several times in the last century.
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Windell Curole, South Lafourche Levee District
This is a cemetery, and we did not build cemeteries in marsh. So where you see this marsh, you actually had dry land, with oak trees and other types of trees, and this is where the people moved to. In this area you had orange orchards and rice fields. There was even a cotton field in the corner over here. The places where those things grew, you have now salt water, or marsh.
Most of the community of Leeville was on this side. Then in 1915 another hurricane hit and that hurricane flooded all the homes here. And that kind of finished Leeville. Most of those people finished moving into Golden Meadow and Cut Off which are 22 and 30 miles farther north from the coastline. They had a double retreat almost in one generation. There were a few families that stay here. Just maybe 30 years ago you might have had 60 families still here. Now, you barely have one family living here in Leeville.
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Read the full-length feature story: Thriving on a Sinking Landscape