Big Bend, along Bayou des Glaises in northeastern Avoyelles Parish between Hamburg and Moreauville, was settled in the 19th century by people of French and English extraction, and its economy was closely tied to the bayou, whose rich alluvial soils supported farming while abundant wildlife supplemented food supplies between harvests. In the mid-nineteenth century, it was among the most prosperous communities in Avoyelles Parish, with many thriving plantations and cotton and moss gins. In 1840, through the intercession of Senator Pierre Couvillion, Bayou des Glaises was cleared of canebrakes, making it more navigable from its mouth on the Atchafalaya at Simmesport along Hamburg, Big Bend, Kleinwood, Rexmere, Bordelonville, Borodino, Moreauville, and Longbridge to the port docks on Bayou Rouge at Cottonport, and steamboats and barges carried imported goods for local farmers while exporting cotton and corn to New Orleans. The community changed at the turn of the 20th century with railroad development: William Edenborn began building a line from Shreveport to Alexandria in 1896, completed that section in May 1902, organized the Louisiana Railway and Navigation Co. in 1903 to extend it to New Orleans, and by 1905 the railroad ran through Mansura, Moreauville, and Big Bend before continuing to Naples, a thriving town later washed away in the 1927 Flood in the area known as Water Valley. In 1906, a railroad bridge was built across Bayou des Glaises with a section crew established to open and close it, and the full line from Angola to New Orleans was completed in October 1906. After the 1927 Flood destroyed a store built about 1900 by Thomas H. Carruth, Byron F. Lemoine built the present Adam Ponthieu Store and Big Bend Post Office, and in 1946 Adam Ponthieu purchased the old country store and moved it a short distance to its present site on Sarto Lane.