After their father died 15 years ago, Mike Smith’s six siblings wanted nothing to do with the tract of land the old man had gradually acquired from his income as a pipeline welder. The land, 365 acres of it, lay in a quiet and sparsely populated corner of Louisiana: nothing but pine trees for miles around. In a county so poor that about a fifth of the population lives below the poverty line, the bequest wasn’t good for much.
But for Smith, a tall, slim man of 61 with a kindly face, DeSoto parish was home. “That’s where my roots are. I wanted the land,” he says. Smith paid $300 an acre – $109,500 in total – to his siblings. And while he kept his home in Shreveport, 40 miles to the north, he travelled down to DeSoto regularly to walk his acres, or hunt squirrel and deer. His plan was to sell the trees for lumber one day, and use the income to fund his retirement. Until then, he would pass the years frugally, making a living as a property valuer and sharing his 50-year-old house with two dogs and a cat. All the while, the county seat of Mansfield, home to 5,500 people, withered. With only coal and timber to support it, the parish could not even repair its roads. Across from the courthouse are telltale signs of the desperation that began to claw at the area – the dusty, vacant windows of the hardware shop and cinema, and beyond them the Community Bank of Louisiana. It opened its doors in 1901 but is now so run down that the visitor struggles to make out what colour the wallpaper would once have been. The phones are from another age and an old standard lamp in an upstairs office blinks fitfully into life and then goes dark again.
Full Story: Louisiana's shale gas bonanza - Financial Times
But for Smith, a tall, slim man of 61 with a kindly face, DeSoto parish was home. “That’s where my roots are. I wanted the land,” he says. Smith paid $300 an acre – $109,500 in total – to his siblings. And while he kept his home in Shreveport, 40 miles to the north, he travelled down to DeSoto regularly to walk his acres, or hunt squirrel and deer. His plan was to sell the trees for lumber one day, and use the income to fund his retirement. Until then, he would pass the years frugally, making a living as a property valuer and sharing his 50-year-old house with two dogs and a cat. All the while, the county seat of Mansfield, home to 5,500 people, withered. With only coal and timber to support it, the parish could not even repair its roads. Across from the courthouse are telltale signs of the desperation that began to claw at the area – the dusty, vacant windows of the hardware shop and cinema, and beyond them the Community Bank of Louisiana. It opened its doors in 1901 but is now so run down that the visitor struggles to make out what colour the wallpaper would once have been. The phones are from another age and an old standard lamp in an upstairs office blinks fitfully into life and then goes dark again.
Full Story: Louisiana's shale gas bonanza - Financial Times
