Mile 210.2 - RBD - Morrisonville

210.2 RBD - Morrisonville

Founded on Manchac Point, a spit of swampy land surrounded by the Mississippi River, by slaves newly freed from plantations near Plaquemine, Louisiana. Following catastrophic flooding on the Mississippi River the residents moved in 1931, a few miles west and just inside the new Federal flood levees, onto land adjacent to the Mayflower Plantation. Dow Chemical Company bought the plantation land next to Morrisonville in 1958 and built a chemical plant to produce vinyl chloride and other chemicals. Dow’s facility encroached on Morrsionville more and more as the facility grew. It was said that the residents could hear announcements over Dow’s loudspeakers in their homes. In the 1980’s extensive vinyl chloride contamination of the groundwater was found under the Dow facility and Morrisonville. Dow bought out the residents, many of whom moved to two new subdivisions named in honor of the old town.