From Tiger Island to jumbo shrimp
The Attakapas called the river Atchafalaya, long river, and it has shaped this town from the start. U.S. surveyors first named the spot Tiger Island after reporting an unknown wild cat. Walter Brashear, a Kentucky planter and surgeon, subdivided his sugar plantation here and the settlement took his name. After the Civil War, steamship and railroad owner Charles Morgan dredged the Atchafalaya Bay Channel and made Brashear his base, and in 1876 the town was renamed Morgan City.
It became a trading town for furs, cypress timber and seafood. In 1917 its swamps stood in for the African jungle in the first Tarzan film, starring Elmo Lincoln. By 1937 the city had earned the title jumbo shrimp capital of the world. That year the community gathered for a Blessing of the Fleet, praying for safe trips and full nets, then held a fais do do at Egle's Place. That party became the Louisiana Shrimp Festival.
The working waterfront is still the point. The city describes itself as a hub for marine, seafood and energy work and as a gateway to the Atchafalaya Basin, with boats leaving before sunrise from a historic district that has been a Main Street community since 1997.
How petroleum joined the shrimp
In 1947 Kerr-McGee and its partners completed the Kermac No. 16 well at Ship Shoal Block 32, about 10 miles offshore in roughly 20 feet of water, on a platform built by Brown and Root. The American Oil and Gas Historical Society calls it the first oil well successfully completed out of sight of land, and it flowed 40 barrels an hour at first. The boom that followed tied the city's future to offshore energy, and the festival added petroleum to its name.
You can see that history up close at the International Petroleum Museum, home of Mr. Charlie, built in 1952 and put to work in 1954 as the first transportable, submersible offshore drilling rig. It drilled hundreds of wells for almost every major company in the Gulf and could house a crew of 58. The city says it is the only place the public can walk aboard an authentic offshore rig.
