16. The Cheniere Caminada Hurricane of 1893
The town of Cheniere Caminada gave its name to the hurricane which destroyed it in 1893, west of Grand Isle. The storm which made landfall there on October 2 came ashore with 135 mph sustained winds and a storm surge exceeding 16 feet. Approximately 1500 residents occupied the town ona penisula of the Louisiana mainland prior to the storm. More than half of them died as the hurricane passed through the region, mostly from the storm surge. In the aftermath of the storm the town was abandoned. “The settlement of Cheniere Caminada has been swept out of existence” read the Thibodeaux Sentinel on October 7, 1893.
The storm, which is also known as the Great October Storm, continued on its way, making a second landfall in Mississippi after crossing the northern Gulf, then moving across the states of the deep south before finally entering the Atlantic Ocean, where it fell apart by the ninth of October. Behind it, across the path it had followed, were at least 2,000 dead according to most estimates. Estimates of the number of injured survivors range as high as 35,000. The economic damage to the southern crops of rice and oranges was heavy, and the Panic of 1893 added to the difficulties of recovery for the agricultural industry across the southern states.