Early historical events, settlement and incorporation

While several American Indian

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 tribes are known to have lived in the area occupied by present-day Lake Charles

Lake Charles, Louisiana

Lake Charles is the fifth-largest incorporated city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, located on Lake Charles, Prien Lake, and the Calcasieu River. Located in Calcasieu Parish, a major cultural, industrial, and educational center in the southwest region of the state, and one of the most important in...

, the first Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an settlers arrived in the 1760s.

In 1781 Martin LeBleu and his wife, Dela Marion, of Bordeaux, France were the first recorded Europeans to settle in the area now known as the LeBleu Settlement. Charles Sallier

Charles Sallier

Lake Charles, Louisiana was named for Charles Sallier, an early settler of the area.Among the first to settle what is known today as Lake Charles were Mr. and Mrs. LeBleu. They arrived in Lake Charles in 1781 from Bordeaux, France, and settled approximately six miles east of present-day Lake...

, one of the first settlers, married LeBleu's daughter, Catherine LeBleu; the Salliers built their home on the beach in what is current-day Lake Charles. The area on the east side of the Calcasieu River was defined as the southern part of the "Neutral Ground" until ratification of the Adams-Onís Treaty

Adams-Onís Treaty

The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty or the Purchase of Florida, was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that gave Florida to the U.S. and set out a boundary between the U.S. and New Spain . It settled a standing border dispute between the two...

 that was ratified in 1821. The infamous pirate, Jean Lafitte

Jean Lafitte

Jean Lafitte was a pirate and privateer in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 19th century. He and his elder brother, Pierre, spelled their last name Laffite, but English-language documents of the time used "Lafitte", and this is the commonly seen spelling in the United States, including for places...

, once delivered stolen slaves and contraband to James Bowie and other plantation owners in the area. By 1860 the area become known as Charles Town in Sallier's honor.

The Rio Hondo, which flowed through Lake Charles, was later called Quelqueshue, a Native American term meaning "Crying Eagle". Transliterated through French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, this became the name of Calcasieu Parish. On March 7, 1861, Lake Charles was officially incorporated as the town of Charleston, Louisiana.

Industrial growth and the Civil War

The city's growth was fairly slow until Captain Daniel Goos, a Frisian

Frisians

The Frisians are a Germanic ethnic group native to the coastal parts of the Netherlands and Germany. They are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia, that was a part of Denmark until 1864. They inhabit an area known as Frisia...

 by birth, came to the city in 1855. Goos established a lumber mill

Lumber

Lumber or timber is wood in any of its stages from felling through readiness for use as structural material for construction, or wood pulp for paper production....

 and schooner dock

Schooner

A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....

, in what became known as Goosport. He promoted a profitable trade with Texan

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 and Mexican

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 ports by sending his schooner downriver into the Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...

. Until the arrival of Goos, a man named Jacob Ryan dominated the lumber industry. Between 1817 and 1855, timber sales from longleaf pine

Longleaf Pine

Pinus palustris, commonly known as the Longleaf Pine, is a pine native to the southeastern United States, found along the coastal plain from eastern Texas to southeast Virginia extending into northern and central Florida....

 and bald cypress

Cypress

Cypress is the name applied to many plants in the cypress family Cupressaceae, which is a conifer of northern temperate regions. Most cypress species are trees, while a few are shrubs...

 remained the city's primary source of economic revenue.

Jacob Ryan convinced the state government to move the parish seat to Lake Charles from its former location at Marion, a settlement about eight miles (13 km) upriver. Later that year, Ryan and Samuel Kirby transferred the parish courthouse and jail by barge to the then-named Charleston. Six years after the city was incorporated, dissatisfaction over the name Charleston arose; on March 16, 1867, Charleston, Louisiana, was renamed and incorporated as the town of Lake Charles.

By the time of the U.S. Civil War, many Americans from the North, along with a large influx of continental Europeans and Jews, had come to settle the area. Attitudes toward slavery in Lake Charles were mixed, as slavery was secondary to business interests. In fact, fewer than five percent of the population were slaves

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

. Many citizens became involved in the war. Some local families supported the Confederacy, while others supported the cause of the Union.

After the Civil War

In the years following the Civil War, Lake Charles regained its status as a lumbering center. Especially in the 1880s, the city saw an increase in population and economic demand largely due to an innovative advertising campaign by J.B. Watkins. Thanks to this campaign, the city's population grew four-hundred percent during this decade.

Using the pine wood from the city's mills, construction of large Victorian mansions

Victorian architecture

The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...

 transformed Lake Charles during the 1890s. Carpenters competed with verve to out-build each other with their use of elaborate fretwork and decoration. The area of present-day Lake Charles located just east of downtown is known as the Charpentier Historic District from the French word for carpenter and features unique homes from this era.

Twentieth century

In 1910, a great fire, known as the Great Fire of 1910 devastated much of the city. The 1890 courthouse, along with most of downtown Lake Charles, was destroyed. Two months afterwards, the Louisiana legislature divided the former Imperial Calcasieu Parish into the current parishes of Allen, Beauregard, Cameron, Jefferson Davis and Calcasieu. However, Lake Charles soon rebuilt itself and continued to grow and expand.

After World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, Lake Charles experienced industrial growth with the onset of the petrochemical refining industries. The Lake Charles Civic Center, built on reclaimed land on the lakefront in the 1970s, hosted many national shows, acts, and pop singers such as Elvis. The city grew to a high of some 80,000 people in the early 1980s, but with local economic recession, the population declined. With the advent of the gaming industry, the city has begun again to see growth. As of the 2000 census

Census

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

, the city had a total population of 71,757.

Present day

Lake Charles suffered extensive damage from Hurricane Rita

Hurricane Rita

Hurricane Rita was the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the most intense tropical cyclone ever observed in the Gulf of Mexico. Rita caused $11.3 billion in damage on the U.S. Gulf Coast in September 2005...

, which struck the city as a Category 3

Category 3

Category 3 can refer to:*Category 3 cable, a specification for data cabling*British firework classification*Category 3 Tropical Cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.*Category 3 Pandemic on the Pandemic Severity Index...

 storm early September 24, 2005. On September 22, the mayor ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city, and approximately ninety percent of the residents left. Evacuees were asked to not return for 48 hours, due to wind and flood damage. There was extensive damage to the city's electrical grid, and many areas did not have power restored for up to three weeks.

On June 20, 2006, a Citgo

Citgo

CITGO Petroleum Corporation is a United States-incorporated, Venezuela-owned refiner, transporter and marketer of transportation fuels, lubricants, petrochemicals and other industrial products. The company is owned by PDV America, Inc., an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Petróleos de...

 petroleum plant located in Sulphur, Louisiana

Sulphur, Louisiana

Sulphur is a city in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 22,512 at the 2000 census. Sulphur is a suburb of Lake Charles, and is part of the Lake Charles Metropolitan Statistical Area.-History:...

 released between 15000 and 18000 bbl (2,384.8 and 2,861.8 m3) of oil into the Calcasieu Ship Channel

Calcasieu Ship Channel

The Calcasieu Ship Channel is a waterway that connects the city of Lake Charles, Louisiana, with the Gulf of Mexico. Its existence allows the Port of Lake Charles, which is actually more than 30 miles from the Gulf, to be the 11th largest seaport in the United States...

. The United States Coast Guard

United States Coast Guard

The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...

 was called in to contain the spilled oil, which had by this time flowed down the Calcasieu River

Calcasieu River

The Calcasieu River is a river on the Gulf Coast of southwestern Louisiana, U.S.A.. Approximately long, it drains a largely rural area of forests and bayou country, meandering southward to the Gulf of Mexico. The name "Calcasieu" comes from the Native American Atakapa language katkosh, for...

. Because of the disaster, the Coast Guard had to close many waterways, including the Calcasieu River Channel and a one-mile (1.6 km) stretch of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway

Gulf Intracoastal Waterway

The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway is the portion of the Intracoastal Waterway located along the Gulf Coast of the United States. It is a navigable inland waterway running approximately 1700 kilometers from Carrabelle, Florida, to Brownsville, Texas.The waterway provides a channel with a controlling...

. The Port of Lake Charles remained closed for some time after the accident due to contamination.

Oil prices surged to over $74 per barrel in part due to the Citgo spillage. The Calcasieu Refining Co., which normally processes 76500 barrels (12,162.5 m³) of oil a day, was working at low levels for weeks after the incident.
As part of the city's recovery from Hurricane Rita, elected officials proposed a plan to renovate the downtown area to make it more attractive and pedestrian-friendly. A primary concern for the downtown revitalization was to include quality and affordable housing. To fund this proposal, officials proposed a city-wide bond issue. To date, about one third of the 90-million dollar bond proposal has been spent. The Lakefront Promenade is currently under construction, as is the 52-berth marina just south of the Civic Center grounds. The monies issued from the bond will also be used for other capital projects throughout the city.

In 2008, a report showed that overall criminal offenses were down 15%, and major crimes were down 9% in the city.