The small city of Westwego sits along the west bank of the Mississippi River within Jefferson Parish. One reader’s question: How did Westwego get its unique name?
The area was first known for a bustling maritime industry. The Louisiana Legislature chartered the Barataria and Lafourche Canal Company to dig out a channel, in an ambitious project carried out in the 1830s. The company dug a channel to Bayou Segnette, and through extensions in other lakes, channels and bayous, made a navigable waterway that ran all the way up to what is now present-day Morgan City.
When the company made its way to Bayou Lafourche, a lock was built, creating the Company Canal waterway. Maritime workers, drawn by trade, became familiar with the area.
John Churchill Chase, hard at work in a 1962 photo, during the time he worked for The States-Item newspaper in New Orleans. 'I don't have any one favorite cartoon,' he said. 'The ones I like best are the ones that endure.'
The Times-Picayune archive
But Westwego owes its name and population increase to later developments — namely the growth of the railroad industry a few decades later. New Orleans native John Churchill Chase gave an account of the settlement’s history in his book, “Frenchmen, Desire, Good Children and Other Streets of New Orleans.”
The New Orleans, Mobile & Chattanooga Railroad, by 1870, had completed a line to Mobile. The company decided not to go onto Chattanooga, instead turning westward, aiming for Texas. The western division of the company, known as the New Orleans, Mobile & Texas Railroad, started looking for suitable sites for this westward line.
They needed to build a terminus with all the trimmings, docks, wharves and infrastructure for a railroad ferry. A plantation was purchased for this purpose and renamed Amesville. Disappointment struck when Amesville was discovered to have an unstable riverbank, unsuitable for transportation and construction purposes.
1950 map of Company Canal in Westwego at left, and Harvey Canal in Harvey, at right
Provided by USGS
A new site had to be found.
The area near Company Canal, with its steady riverbank, rose to the occasion. The Westwego terminus was built there, and by 1871, construction on a western line began.
Local stories have several versions of the naming process for this terminus. One of the more popular versions attributes the name to railroad conductors shouting “West-We-Go,” as the trains took off westward. Chase has a different theory: New York board directors.
1936 map shows Company Canal connecting Westwego with Bayou Segnette.
Provided by USGS
“It grew out of a series of meetings of the railroad’s board of directors in faraway New York,” Chase wrote. “They had purchased a huge plantation, only to find it useless for terminus purposes. … When the recommendations came in from the engineers that the Company Canal was suitable, it was with great relief that they voted, “Then west we go from here!”
In 1872, one of the earliest documented newspaper uses of the name was reported in The Times-Picayune.
“The New Orleans, Mobile and Texas Railroad have completed and have in operation their main stem from Westwego, distant from Canal street about five miles on the opposite bank of the river, Donaldsonville,” the Times-Picayune reported on July 19, 1872.
While the terminal name caught on quickly, “Westwego” the city took time to build.
Durac Terrebonne Fishermen's Exchange on Sala Avenue, now Westwego Historical Museum.
Provided by Richard Campanella
Sensing an opportunity in 1892, entrepreneur Pablo Sala bought a tract of land on the lower side of Company Canal. He split the land into 162 plots, naming the whole area “Salaville.”
After an 1893 hurricane wrecked the nearby fishing community of Cheniere Caminida, many Cheniere refugees bought plots and moved into the area, drastically swelling the area’s population. Residents knew the area by the Westwego terminus and the name of Westwego became the common way to reference the settlement.