Summer of Pearls

Ben Crowell remembers the Great Caddo Lake Pearl Rush of 1874 well. Ben would fall in love for the first time that summer during one of the last great rushes of the nineteenth century, a rush that could not have come at a better time for the riverboat community of Port Caddo.

Just a few months earlier the town had been dying. The railroads that were cutting across the country made the riverboat meaningless, and those same railroads didn't stop anywhere near Port Caddo. By the end of the…