Sala Avenue Cannery Row

By the 1890s, Sala Avenue in Westwego was processing hundreds of tons of shrimp, oysters, and crab — seven canneries and packing houses lined the street, and locals called it Cannery Row. The industry boomed after the 1893 hurricane destroyed Chenière Caminada and drove fishing families upriver to Westwego. By the 1940s, five major processors operated here — Ed Martin Seafood, Robinson Canning, Louisiana Blue Crab, Hudson Seafood, and Cutcher Seafood — employing 567 people in a town of 5,000. Eighty-three percent of those workers were women. W.A. Robinson chartered Robinson Canning Company in 1929 at 500 Louisiana Street, two years after authorities dynamited the levee in front of his previous facility during the Great Flood of 1927 to save New Orleans. He retired in 1956, and his sons Ray, Alan, and Kenneth took over. Ray's son Bill — Preston Robinson's father — joined the operation. The company shipped canned shrimp domestically and internationally for 61 years before ceasing operations in 1990. Robinson's wasn't alone in closing. Gulf shrimp prices collapsed from $4.50 a pound to as low as 25 cents as cheap imports flooded the market. Half the fleet disappeared. The canneries on Sala Avenue closed one by one. Ed Martin, which had shipped shrimp to 42 states and supplied the U.S. Army during World War II, shut down in 1975. The street is quieter now, but the Westwego Farmers & Fisheries Market still operates where the packing houses stood, and the shrimp boats still dock at the lot down the road. The Robinson Canning Company archive — 20 linear feet of ledgers, personnel records, photographs, and audio/video recordings — is preserved at the University of New Orleans Earl K. Long Library (MSS 285).