Midland, Louisiana
Acadia Parish
(submitted by and photos by Gerald & Tammy Westmoreland)
Midland is an unincorporated farming community in Acadia Parish, located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 90 and Louisiana Highway 91. GPS: 30.180833, -92.502778. It is also located at the intersection of the former Louisiana Western Railroad (later a Southern Pacific Transportation Company subsidiary and now a joint BNSF Railway/Union Pacific Railroad line) and its branches to Eunice and Gueydan.
Some say Midland was given its name because it was the halfway point on the old railroad running westward from New Orleans to Houston. Midland first appeared on an Acadia Parish map as Midland Junction.
During the 1870s, Frank Quebodeaux operated a horse-and-buggy ferry over Bayou Plaquemine Brûlée built of cypress logs and was hauled across the bayou by ropes.
In 1896, the railroad was extended from Midland to Gueydan, Louisiana and then from Gueydan to Abbeville, Louisiana in 1902. Southern Pacific began plans to put a railroad roundhouse at Midland due to Charles H. Cowen, one of the area's most successful rice farmers, developing the town. Cowen was an Illinois native who bought 160 acres (0.65 km2) of land in the Midland area in 1892, and bought another 600 acres (2.4 km2) shortly after that. In 1902, he formed the Midland Development Co. and the Midland Rice Milling Co.. and on April 22 of that year, sold 156 town lots at auction. After Cowen lost a leg in a rice threshing accident and died soon after, Southern Pacific withdrew plans to place a roundhouse in Midland.
Midland's first post office was opened on June 13, 1902, in the Callahan general store, with Eugene T. Callahan as postmaster. The first school at Midland was established in 1903.
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