Houma, Louisiana

Episode 126 / 4 July 2019 / 154 min / full

PCP, Sadness, Or Crazy

"We are going to Homa, Louisiana, Homa, which is HOUMA, but I have been told on good authority it's pronounced Homa; it's in Terrabon County, Terrabon, which is Bonterre backwards, so it's the earth" about 0:07:24

The case: Murder of Bobby Todd, Terry Abear, Anne Tierney and Sandra Brake (August 14th, 1977). Read the case file.

The figures, as told in 2019

Population

33,784

Median age

about 36 and a half

Median household income

about $43,000

Median home value

$164,400

Two-bedroom rent

about $895

Cost of living

about 94

Religious

66.3%

Property crime

▲ about double the average

Violent crime

▼ under 10% above average

History, in brief

• Named after the Houma people, a Native American tribe believed to be relatives of the Choctaw; the United Houma Nation is recognised by Louisiana but not federally. about 0:08:52
• The town was formed in 1832 and incorporated in 1848. about 0:09:11
• Settled by French and Spanish colonists, with Acadians arriving in the late eighteenth century after being expelled by the British from Nova Scotia during the Seven Years War. about 0:09:51
• About 15,000 people were expelled from Nova Scotia, and about 3,000 of them settled in the bayou region. about 0:10:34
• The area was developed for sugar cane plantations in the antebellum years before the Civil War. about 0:11:46
• In 1862 four Union soldiers travelling by wagon from New Orleans to Houma were ambushed by armed citizens; two were killed and two seriously wounded. about 0:12:37
• In retaliation 400 troops were brought into Houma and citizens were arrested wholesale; the home of a Doctor Jennings was burned, two other houses torn down and an outlying plantation's house and slave quarters burned. about 0:13:03
• Sugar cane remained a major industry after the Civil War and into the twentieth century. about 0:14:48
• The swamp around Houma kept the area isolated from outside influence into the 1930s. about 0:15:36
• In the 1970s many South Vietnamese refugees settled in southern Louisiana and Houma and worked as shrimpers. about 0:16:53
• Downtown Houma is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. about 0:17:36
• Houma was at one point the site of the deepest oil well in the parish. about 0:18:47
• Demographia's 2013 International Housing Survey rated Houma as affordable. about 0:19:00
• Tab Benoit established the Voice of the Wetlands Music Festival in 2005. about 0:27:15

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