Fordoche, Louisiana: business and the local economy

Fordoche is a town in Pointe Coupee Parish, on Bayou Fordoche along the old Jefferson Davis Highway, 4.5 miles from Livonia. The 2020 Census counted 910 residents on about 2.4 square miles. The town describes itself as a bedroom community, and its own history shows how much of its economy has depended on the ground beneath it.

Cotton, then oil

A 1976 article in the Pointe Coupee Banner, which the town reprints on its website, says the area was cotton country until about 1912. A levee break at Morganza in 1894 damaged the Fordoche area, and the boll weevil did more harm in the early 1900s. A moss gin was set up, along with a mill making stave bolts that ran until the early 1920s. Many of the original settlers left, and Italian and French families moved in.

The turning point came in December 1948. The article says discoveries at Lottie and Fordoche that month began the oil and gas industry in Pointe Coupee Parish, and that the first Fordoche oil well was finished on Christmas Day 1948. It reports that through March 1975 the Bayou Fordoche Field had produced 6,477,202 barrels of oil, and the Fordoche Field 34,291,867 barrels of oil and 110,372,338 thousand cubic feet of gas. In July 1975 the Fordoche Field had 37 producing oil wells and 32 producing gas wells, and the Bayou Fordoche Field had 11 producing oil wells. The town added that the oil field provided jobs for some residents, while others worked in industry and construction, including iron work, or in farming.

Those are 1975 numbers, and the town does not publish newer ones. A 1991 paper by two authors correlated 62 well penetrations in one of the field’s sandstone layers. It reported that a sequential acid treatment had stopped declines in production caused by minerals in the rock.

Work and farming today

Current figures are available only for the parish. Between 2020 and 2024 the Census Bureau estimated 8,471 employed residents in Pointe Coupee Parish. The largest industry group was education, health care and social assistance at 24.3 percent, followed by manufacturing at 10.8 percent and construction at 10.0 percent. Government workers were 19.9 percent of the total, and 7.3 percent were self-employed in unincorporated businesses.

Farming remains a large part of the land base. The USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 485 farms in the parish, with sales of $191.2 million, 96 percent of it from crops. Sugarcane and soybeans each covered more than 57,000 acres.

Local government

Fordoche was incorporated in 1961, with Anthony P. Pizzolato as its first mayor. In 1976 it was run by a mayor, a board of aldermen, a police chief and a volunteer fire department. The Census Bureau now lists it as a town. Its website today names these services: a water utility, a police department, a fire department, garbage collection, parks and recreation, animal services, building and culvert permits, code compliance and a court. Business owners deal with the town for water service and for building and culvert permits.