BR’s cousin has rich history

• Advocate staff report
• Published: Jun 14, 2009

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

PORT ALLEN — The city of Port Allen has come a long way since its incorporation as a city in 1916. It has grown and prospered while maintaining its small-town character.

This city of just more than 5,000 people remains something of a junior cousin to Louisiana’s capital city, just a bridge span away to the east. 

The third floor of city hall offers a spectacular view of the Baton Rouge skyline, dominated by the distinctive State Capitol.

The city’s Mississippi riverfront development — also known as the Old Ferry Landing — has become a focal point for the city. It features a pedestrian promenade, benches and ornamental lighting.

The ferry landing, which operated from 1820 to 1968, once shuttled people back and forth between Port Allen and Baton Rouge.

The town was named after Henry Watkins Allen, owner of Allendale Plantation and a Confederate governor of Louisiana late in the Civil War. He was a leader in a movement to build a plank road between Grosse Tete and the Mississippi River, where Port Allen would develop.

The Port of Greater Baton Rouge, just outside the city limits, is one of the 10 busiest ports in the country and services barges and ocean-going vessels carrying all types of cargo.

The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway — an east-west inland waterway — cuts the shipping distance between Florida and Texas and adds to the business done at the port.

The city in 2009 was scheduled to open a new fire station on La. 1. The West Baton Rouge Museum complex located in the city also was expanding.

 The museum displays rural life in South Louisiana and features a Creole cottage built in 1830, slave cabins and a “shotgun” house. It recently acquired a plantation mercantile store built in the late 1800s.