Oberlin developed on the edge of the Louisiana prairie where Cajun prairie traditions and Anglo-American pinewoods customs blended into a distinctive community. Early settlers were drawn to freshwater springs and oak trees near the Calcasieu River and established Oaklin Springs there. After the 1862 Homestead Act, pioneers from Oberlin, Ohio, settled near Oaklin Springs, and in the 1880s rumors of a railroad led them to move the town east and name the new site Oberlin; when the railroad instead ran farther south, another settlement grew by the tracks, becoming Oberlin while the earlier plots became Old Town. Railroads then brought lumber companies that harvested the surrounding pine forests and transformed the local economy, social order, and built environment, with mills supporting the growth of stores, hotels, theaters, jails, and courthouses even though the timber was largely exhausted by the 1930s. The surrounding prairie first supported cattle and sheep raising under open-range practices, with cooperation among owners and cowboys essential, while sheep provided wool, meat, and fat and stockmen fought wolves and coyotes with methods including wolf pits. Farmers also relied on low-lying fields for rain-dependent providence rice until northern settlers in the late 1800s and early 1900s introduced improved rice strains, canal irrigation, and large machinery that expanded rice cultivation; although the timber boom temporarily drew workers away, many later returned to farming. In this isolated region, people also practiced folk medicine based on herbal knowledge, symbolism, and belief, including remedies drawn in part from Coushatta and Atakapa healing traditions, and Cajun traiteurs used prayers, gestures, blessed objects, and sometimes herbs to treat ailments.