Before significant settlement in this region, Bayou Courtableau was considered a major highway through the area. Around 1760, Jacques Courtableau built a trading post at the junction of Bayou Courtableau and its distributary channel, Bayou Teche, and the intersection later became known as Barre’s Landing after Alexander Charles Barré, who eventually purchased the land; today it is the town of Port Barre. In the trading post’s early days, flatboats and keel-boats brought goods south to New Orleans, with flatboats navigating shallow waters but traveling only downstream and usually being taken apart and sold for lumber upon reaching the city, while keel-boats could be maneuvered both downstream and upstream. The arrival of small draft steamboats in 1832 established a more reliable connection to the Gulf of Mexico, though travel was frequently affected by low water, immovable rafts of debris, underwater snags, and shifting sandbars, including one at the junction of Bayou Courtableau and the Atchafalaya River called Le Petit Diable, or “The Little Devil.” During the low water season from June to December, this sandbar prevented larger boats from entering the bayou, so a smaller boat on standby loaded cargo and passengers for the final phase of the trip, a costly and time-consuming transfer that could turn a three- or four-day trip into a 13-day journey. The local steamboat era ended in the early 1900s once the railroad came to town, and Port Barre then became a timber town during the cypress logging era around 1908, with the local mill encouraging significant growth because of the number of employees it needed. Growth continued after oil was discovered here in the late 1920s. Before levees were built along the Atchafalaya Basin Floodway, Port Barre suffered severe flooding, and when the nearby Bayou Des Glaises levee broke during the Mississippi River Flood of 1927, Port Barre was inundated with eight to 10 feet of water as refugee camps in Opelousas and Grand Coteau hosted thousands of flood victims seeking food and shelter. After the waters receded, residents returned to roads left impassable, crops destroyed, and homes uninhabitable. In the late 1920s, Louisiana Highway 190 was built through the area, and several nearby bridges were constructed in the 1930s, making the area more easily accessible.