Duckport (also Duck Port or Duckport Landing) was a plantation and boat landing in Madison Parish, Louisiana, United States, best known today as one of the endpoints of the unsuccessful Duckport Canal project during the American Civil War. An alternate name for the Duckport Landing was Sparta.[1]
In the 19th century, Duckport Landing was located between Paw Paw Island and Young's Point along the Mississippi River.[2] There was a boat landing at Duckport that was used by mail packet steamboats beginning sometime before 1852.[3] In 1869, the application for a Duck Port post office stated there were about 150 families in the vicinity who would be served by the station.
The sternwheel packet boat Ben Hur burned and sank at Duckport in March 1916.[4] Duckport was flooded in spring 1922.[5] There was an illegal 150-gallon still in operation near Duckport during Prohibition.[6] A fragment of the civil war-era canal was still visible in 1933 from a gravel road that ran from Thomaston to Duckport.[7] [8] Thomaston Road had been the "center of wealth" in the area before the war and had been lined with plantation houses.[9] By the 21st century, all that was left of the canal was "a small indentation because area farmers tried to plow it down."
The Duckport Plantation encompassed about 1800 acres as of the 1990s.[10] Duckport Landing no longer exists and has disappeared under the Mississippi River.[11]