By Cole Williams
Designer of The Journal
Grand Isle already had a modest tourist trade by the 1860s. By 1888, the island boasted a few hotels, including the Krantz Hotel and the Hotel Herwig. The tourists came mostly by steamer. Unfortunately, changing water levels often left them stranded off-shore.
In 1889, German immigrant John Krantz, with the help of then Gov. Henry Warmoth, was instrumental in launching construction of the New Orleans, Fort Jackson and Grand Isle Railroad. By 1890, the railroad reached its closest approach to Grand Isle, reducing travel time and increasing the amount of tourists visiting the island.
The improvements in transportation prompted speculators and reporters to predict that Grand Isle would become “The Riviera of the South.”
Construction of the most opulent of the island’s hotels, The Ocean Club, was completed in 1891-1892. The builders bragged that “Nothing could blow it away.”
It would survive only one tourist season.
The tourists had gone home when the winds came screaming out of the gulf and the waters rushed over Grand Isle on Oct. 1, 1893. Winds were estimated at 175 miles per hour, and they ripped every leaf off the trees as eight to 10 feet of water surged over the island. Newspaper headlines screamed “Wind of Death,” and “An Awful Night”. The hurricane resulted in an estimated 1,600 deaths along the gulf coast. Relatively few people were killed on Grand Isle. Most fatalities occured inland in Lafourche Parish.
However, when the horrors of that raging night were over, so also was Grand Isle’s gilded age. The resorts laid in ruins. The Ocean Club was irreparably damaged. Krantz suffered losses of $100,000, as half of his cabins and most of the larger buildings were totally destroyed. Krantz himself suffered a broken arm and ribs when his house collapsed on him.
Sadder still were the survivors. Whole families and indeed family names were erased from the face of the earth. Understandably, many of the survivors gathered up what belongings they had left and headed north to settle along upper Bayou Lafourche. A contingency of victims ended up southwest of New Orleans and founded present-day Westwego.
Several years ago, a group of concerned citizens decided to erect a memorial to the people who lost their lives in the great storm. The small cemetery where many of the victims were buried en masse was also cleaned up and has been maintained ever since.
With modern technology’s ability to give us very advanced warning of dangerous storm systems in the gulf, it’s unlikely Louisiana will ever again suffer the kind of human tragedy wrought by the great storm of 1893. However, one of the worst El Niños in history is leaving us with a very uncertain hurricane season.
As one of the people responsible for the memorial, Wendall Curole, put it: “It’s important to remember what happened in 1893. It reminds us that we are all still at the mercy of the forces of nature.”
A version of this article originally appeared in Sauce Piquante Magazine in 1998, seven years before Hurricane Katrina.