By Jessica Gorman
In December 1911, while campaigning for U.S. Senate, Governor J. Y. Sanders paid a visit to Webster Parish. His itinerary included appearances at Cotton Valley, Shongaloo, Yellow Pine, Doyline, Minden, and Dubberly.
Governor Sanders arrived on Thursday, December 14th and began his tour of the parish at Cotton Valley. There, he spoke to a crowd gathered at the high school and spent the night in the home of Mr. & Mrs. S. W. Keith.
Friday morning, he and his entourage climbed aboard a locomotive owned by the Porter-Wadley Lumber Company to travel to Shongaloo along the Dorcheat Valley Railroad. This trip left enough of an impression on newspaperman J. P. Kent that he related the story in the December 22nd edition of the Minden Democrat.
Accompanying Governor Sanders aboard the locomotive were District Judge John N. Sandlin, District Attorney Thomas W. Robertson, Clerk of the District Court J. H. Tillman, and Minden Street Commissioner Captain J. J. Cahill. Limited space forced Tillman and Cahill to ride in the coal bunker.
It was suggested that the engineer must have seen an opportunity to impresss his important passengers and so, he set off for Shongaloo at a higher-than-normal rate of speed. Compounded by the fact that this particular railroad had not been built so as to avoid hills and the muddy conditions caused by a recent bout of rainy weather, the group was not impressed.
Kent described the trip as follows:
“On this particular morning when this little locomotive would mount one of these long hills and start on the down grade into the valley below one had that peculiar sensation as if being rolled off of the steep roof of a two-story building.”
As they raced along the track, up and down the hills, the governor let his displeasure be known telling the engineer “he would rather not go at all…if he had to go at the pace we were then going.” The district attorney followed suit saying “he thought there was a law somewhere against a locomotive running over 60 miles an hour on a rainy day on a slick track and over a soft road bed.”
Upon their safe arrival at Shongaloo, Governor Sanders spoke to the group gathered there. Whether or not it was the plan from the start is not known, but they did not make a return trip aboard the locomotive. Instead, they traveled to Sarepta before continuing on to the governor’s scheduled appearance in Yellow Pine that evening.
(Jessica Gorman is Executive Director of the Dorcheat Historical Association Museum, Webster Parish Historian, and is an avid genealogist.)