In the late 1800s, before narrow-gauge railroads crisscrossed the piney woods of southwest Louisiana, loggers prayed just as fervently as farmers for just the right amount of rain. It wasn’t because they wanted the trees to grow. It was so that they could get their logs to the sawmills.
In those days, logs were floated down the Calcasieu River to the dozen mills that ringed Lake Charles, and the…