08/30/2026
Louisiana residents will never know the history and historic places they have lost
With the recent announcement of the planned SpaceX facility in Vermilion Parish there is considerable excitement over the creation of thousands of good paying jobs and associated economic development in Louisiana. In revealing this transformational deal Governor Landry noted that unlike previous missed opportunities and boom-and-bust extractive industries that came and left the state, SpaceX will bring lasting prosperity to Louisiana residents. The investment of $100 billion to build the world’s largest spaceport on the Gulf Coast between Vermilion Bay and Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge is even being touted as a boon for desperately needed wetlands protection and coastal restoration. Some are raising questions about potential environmental impacts, one month after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed the waiver of 13 major environmental and historic preservation laws on behalf of the commercial aerospace industry, including the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and National Historic Preservation Act. The deadline for public comments comes just one week after official disclosure of the SpaceX project.
It seems reasonable for Louisiana residents to ask about potential environmental impacts of transformative industries that receive state tax exemptions and extraordinary legal protections from the state legislature. After all, much of the 195 square miles of marsh where Starbase Louisiana will be located has been severely damaged by oil and gas industry canals. These are some of the scars that Governor Landry attributed to out-of-state extractive industries. Unfortunately, the answers to such questions will not be made available once the FAA’s proposed waiver is approved. If SpaceX can restore the wetlands and reduce coastal erosion in Vermilion Parish on its own accord, maybe the tax-payer supported commercial aerospace industry will also find a way to stop relative sea-level rise.
Other changes are coming to Pecan Island and the surrounding region but are also largely excluded from consideration. Many Vermilion Parish residents have heard about Morgan Mounds, the 1,300-year-old Native American monuments on Pecan Island. Only one of those four monuments remain, the others having been bulldozed during road construction and sold as landfill. Archaeologists who were able to salvage information from one of the monuments discovered that a house or temple stood on top of the more than 16-feet-high conical platform built on the west side of a plaza. The residents made and used ceramic vessels strikingly similar to those found on the Florida Coast, raising more questions than the archaeologists could answer based on the available evidence (see Louisiana Archaeology Bulletin No. 47).
Fewer people know about the more than 20 other recorded places on Pecan Island, Front Ridge, Back Ridge, and Cypress Point. Many of these also date from the Coles Creek period (ca. 700-1200 AD) but some are earlier and also had monuments. Veazy Mounds was said to have 14 and is thought to date as early as the Marksville period (ca. 1-400 AD). Henry B. Collins, Jr. with the Smithsonian Institution visited Pecan Island one hundred years ago and excavated human remains in some of the mounds and a cemetery known as Copell. The identity of the Native Americans who lived at Pecan Island is not really a mystery. They included ancestors of the Hiye′kiti Ishak, the eastern people. Along with all of the coastal tribes between Vermilion and Galveston bays, they were misnamed Attakapa. Ishak lived on Pecan Island when Iberville and Bienville paddled up and down the Mississippi River in the eighteenth century. Acadians and others arrived and found the cheniers or relict beach ridges covered with live oak and pecan trees, veritable islands in the marsh.
The wetlands and cheniers where Starbase Louisiana will be built have not been systematically surveyed or studied for historic properties and places. What little is known about the historical landscape has been salvaged or accidentally discovered. In addition to launch pads, production plants and support facilities, there will reportedly be a deep-water shipping port, an airport, offices and residential housing. Without environmental or cultural surveys for informed decision making, there is no way to know what will be damaged or lost by impending changes to the landscape. Just 65 miles east of the LNG facilities at Calcasieu Pass, the commercial aerospace industry promises to further transform Louisiana’s Chenier Plain and bring permanent prosperity to Louisiana. The cheniers, marshes and coastal communities of southwest Louisiana bear the deep scars of previous economic development opportunities from out-of-state corporations. Within the bounds of non-disclosure agreements, Louisiana residents are assured that this time will be different. While it may be too late to expect answers, it is reasonable to ask at what cost.
