Joseph Paul Landry Sr.

One of First Oil Wells Drilled in Terrebonne
Parish Comes up dry... the well, better known as the Wildcat", owned by Joseph Paul Landry Sr., was established into a small company known as the Bayou Cane Petroleum Company back in 1917. It was located eight-hundred feet from La. Hwy. 24 on the west side. It was drilled twenty-six hundred feet deep down in one year.
J.P. Landry Jr. was born in 1907 and raised on the Halfway Plantation. He started to work for the well company when he was only ten years old. His job was to collect mud samples in small jars in order to check the viscosity of the mud. He recalled those days as being a big curiosity venture. People would come from miles around to see exactly what an oil well looked like and how they operated. Employees would work from sunup to sundown, seven days a week. Being there was little or no transportation, mules were used to haul heavy logs and other field equipment. After a year of production, no oil was produced and Landry Sr. lost a great deal of money. He continued in the sugar industry after the failure of the oil well. He continued to raise until cane borers struckthe sugar can crop in the entire southeastern part of Louisiana in 1925. He decided to go into the dairy business but it proved to be too hard for him to handle. Eventually a new crop of cane was brought to the area and the Landrys resumed the sugar cane farming.