By Jessica Gorman

Construction of the Louisiana Ordnance Plant had a significant effect not just on the area encompassed by the plant but also the surrounding area.

The beginning of construction brought an influx of workers into the area. The Homes Registration Office of Defense Housing Co-ordination was established to assist these workers with locating housing in the area. The office was located upstairs in the Miller Building in downtown Minden. Dr. E. S. Richardson was named director. Housing officials from Washington, D.C. visited Minden to emphasize the immediate need for housing workers and their families as nothing could be allowed to hamper progress of the plant construction. Residents were reminded that “it is the patriotic duty of every citizen living in the area to make available every possible housing facility, including rooms, apartments, and houses to defense workers.” Almost immediately, 300 rooms and 40 apartments were listed with the homes registration office.

Hundreds of workers were being hired each week. 1500 construction workers were reported to have been hired by mid-August. By the first of September, that number had more than doubled to 3,967. This number quickly grew to 8200 in October, 9,715 by Thanksgiving, and 10,386 by the beginning of December.

What was referred to as a “grave housing shortage” quickly ensued. While there were plenty of rooms available for single men, that was not the case for those with families. Some of those who had moved to the area where living in tents. There were 130 applications on file for those looking to rent houses and apartments. The situation quickly came to be considered an emergency at which point E. S. Richardson asked to have a low-cost housing project built to address the situation. In a letter, Dr. Richardson states “a casual inspection of this district at this time will reveal hundreds of families now living in makeshift tents and trailer camps, have absolutely no sanitation facilities, on the farms surrounding the federal owned property. We are daily besieged by numbers of applicants employed in the construction of this project who are unable to provide such crude housing and may be forced to give up their employment on this account.”

In April 1942, olive drab trailers began arriving from Michigan to house workers and their families. These trailers would make up the Minden Family Trailer Village which would consist of 300 trailers with every 25 trailers sharing laundry and bath facilities. The trailer village never reached full occupancy and by the end of September about half of those trailers were removed and sent to Mobile.

Part of the reason the trailer village never filled up is because new subdivisions were being constructed. The first of these was Oak Ridge Subdivision just off Shreveport Road along Slack Avenue and Roosevelt Drive. It boasted a park and no cross-traffic. It was to include a total of 80 new homes. The first 20 were ready to be occupied by June 1942. By September, F. C. McClanahan had started construction of the Dixie Heights subdivision in Dixie Inn. When it was completed in December, it was the closest subdivision to the plant. It included 74 new four and five-room houses. In November, construction was completed on 100 new homes in the Hill Crest Subdivision along Tillman, MacArthur, Chandler, and Washington Streets in Minden. The Fairfield Apartments also opened just off Sibley Road on Carolina Street adding 52 apartments. These apartment buildings are still standing and are now the Hickory Ridge Apartments.

In Doyline, new homes were built along with at least one boarding house and apartment building. Trailer camps were set up, many residents had taken boarders into their homes, and there were those living in tents. Being the closest town to the plant, a site was sought out in Doyline for construction of a federal housing project. In May 1942, 45 acres was selected. The Greentrees project was funded by the Federal Public Housing Administration and was to include 200 prefabricated homes. That number was later decreased to 150. The project was completed in July 1943.

Just as quickly as the housing shortage occurred, efforts were launched to meet the need. By the end of 1942, newspaper ads were boasting of the new additions to Minden, 263 new houses and 52 new apartments.

(Jessica Gorman is Executive Director of the Dorcheat Historical Association Museum, Webster Parish Historian, and an avid genealogist.)