Alphabet File page 387

Just west of the extreme limits of Waveland, Jackson Bayou enters the sound and within easy access beyond, Jackson Caddy Boling and Three Oaks Bayous, the last affording water access to Pearl River alongside the elegant Club House now being erected by Mr. Albert Baldwin and others of New Orleans at the east end of the Louisville and Nashville bridge across the Pearl.  This statement gives an idea of the wide possibilities of water communication that its tributaries furnish the finest of fishing and along the sinuous courses of these tributary streams, inland, is excellent sport by water and land for game; principally water and marsh fowl, including in season the excelled snipe, the luscious plover and endless varieties of ducks: but also, extending to deer and other game.  Then there is the pleasure of sailing and rowing over water that open to the adventurous pleasure seeker the widest possible scope for his talents and tasks.  Just off Waveland lies the Louisiana shore and Cat Island. Between which runs Pass Marian in to the open Gulf. At night to be seen the very vigilant eye of Pass Marian and the fitful gleam of Cat Island's revolving light, both shining over the waters to guard and guide the weary mariner, a way off to the West is St. Joe's answering beam; and away to the East are lights of the L. & N. bridge crossing Bay St. Louis; and between and around and through all rest, and run, and sigh, and sound the waters of the sea over which comes the balmy breath of breeze.  But the distinctive feature in which these shores, equal in other charms, surpass all and brook no rival is the play of light and shadow, sunshine and shade over and on sea and sky and earth and air.  The dewy freshness of early morn brings and bears here its own special benisons. With the sun still below the horizon and at the hour when old Neptune and his realm together with all on earth and in the air, await in hushed expectancy the miracle of the appearance above the horizon of the glorious Ruler of the day, then indeed, there's ozone in the air that has the tonic value of many cocktails; and , as an appetizer, is unsurpassed; though the prosaic worshiper of "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," may well dispense with adventitious appetizing aid, still doubly blessed; yea, thrice happy is the mortal who rises in time to meet and greet the hour and the king from the arms of old Neptune,” rocked in the cradle of the deep."  If from the bath, at that hour, one does not arise like Namaan of old, pure and clean and, with all seeking what he may devour, then woeful indeed must have been the original condition and dim in mind and heart the maxims that cleanliness is next to godliness, and that a thing of beauty is a joy forever, yea, a thing of grandeur, and ever securing, never ending sublimity. Then, as the day progresses, there is scarce an hour that does not vary wondrously from its fellows in beauty, with ever-changing tide and wave and current below, and ever-varying hue and shade and shape of the could castles in the air above ,these changes occasionally interspersed with the grandeur of squall or storm, harmless on these coasts of the Sound. Then late evenings opalline tints and sunset's radiant glow, combined in beauty and sublimity that suggest summer isles of Eden, lying in dark purple spheres of sea, which are indeed here a reality.  Then after sunset's witching hour, comes mayhap a dark mayhap a moonlight night.  In the one case, what sport floundering, which term signifies, not literally its meaning, but spearing the luscious flounder by the light of torches, and a phosphorescent sea, or enjoying the evening cigar and talk and sports on the wharves or verandas fanned by the fragrant breeze, to say nothing of driving or cycling along the lovely shell roads of Waveland.  Then to sleep, and such sleep - indeed, tired nature's sweet restorer, restorer of the invalid, invigorator of youth, destroyer of the reign of pill and potion is this great sanitarium that Nature here has placed for the hand and heart and brain of man.  Then if a moonlight night, such moonlight as only the Silver Southern moon bestows.  Could a peri at the gate of such an Eden stand, there would, me thinks, be heartfelt yearning to enter the charmed portals, for on a moonlight night in Waveland it would be difficult to discover the trail of the serpent and there seem to exist in the world, only peaceful, quiet and silvery light, and happiness and love.  One of the greatest pleasures of Waveland is the choice bathing, which considering absence of under-tow purses need quicksand or stepoffs, and presence of, in sound safe sandy bottom, is simply superb, for the vivifying salt water of the  sea is always and everywhere the same; but by these conditions the pleasure bathing in the ocean are very varied.  To briefly summarize, here at Waveland the coast resort town nearest and most accessible to New Orleans, are found fishing, hunting, boating, bathing, driving, all under conditions practically ideal.  Already within an hour and a half of the great city of New Orleans used as a summer residence by very many prominent citizens of that city and as a permanent home by not a few. Waveland, with all this combination of attractions and accessibility, is bound to progress towards the full realization of a future, forseen only by those familiar with its features and but dimly realized even by them.  Its population now contains brokers, lawyers, doctors, merchants-princes and manufacturers of New Orleans and while the principal portion f the front is already occupied, sites back from the beach are easily procurable and residences there situated, equally share in all these charms.  As each season has here its own particular attractions and winter perhaps the greatest share of all, Northern people accustomed to the bleak Atlantic shores of that season should come and see what bountiful nature has placed here and to see would be to enjoy such pleasures as here waits those desiring to escape the rigors of the North, would bring them back again and again and again and the ideal residences, that are now occupied by summer dwellers from New Orleans, would be used to shelter northern visitors during winters that would seem like Indian summer to them. (ATG page 10)

 

  1892 Aldermen -

  Paul Conrad 1892 (8/6/1892)

J. P. Barr 1892  8/8/1892)  1893

 

 

 

  WAVELAND - THE LOVELY VILLAGE ON THE MISSISSIPPI SOUND

 

  Staff Correspondent of the TIMES-DEMOCRAT: Waveland, May 4, 1893

 

  Waveland is a suggestive name.  Suggestive of a land made musical by the swish of waters and by the creamy crush of billows on the beach.  A place where sparkling waters stretch unbroken to the horizon's edge, and where waves, in never-ending succession, march in long ranks, to roll their slow and slumberous lengths on the sandy shore.  The little town of Waveland, Miss., does not belie its name; stretched as it is for four miles along the coast, it receives all that nature can do to make it a veritable land of the wave, as well as of the salt sea breeze.

 

  Waveland is forty-eight miles from New Orleans, on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and is the nearest of that series of summer resorts that lie scattered along the coast from Lake Borgne nearly to the beginning of Mobile Bay.  All of these Gulf towns are nothing more or less than outlying suburbs of the Crescent City, and nearly a fourth of the intelligent and fashionable people of New Orleans spend their summers in them.  And Waveland, more than any other, deserves the title of suburb, for all but two or three of its hundred cottages are occupied by business men of New Orleans, who spend the entire summer here with their families, only coming into the city once or twice a week, or sometimes making daily trips, to attend to their business affairs.

 

  Waveland consists of but a winding shell road along the beach and one row of houses bordering that, and behind the one row of houses but green pine woods.  Waveland does not pretend to be a Country town.  It has no stores and scarcely any native inhabitants.  It is simply a residence portion of New Orleans, which only needs rapid transit on the part of the railroad and frequent trains to develop it into a place of some magnitude, and to make it even more popular than it is now.