Native Americans discovered that the island's verdant flora covered a precious natural resource: a massive salt dome. They boiled the island's briny spring water to extract salt, which they traded to other tribes as far away as central
Texas,
Arkansas, and
Ohio. Marsh operated a sugar plantation on the island's fertile soil. In 1837, his daughter Sarah Craig Marsh married Daniel Dudley Avery a
jurist from
Baton Rouge. In 1849, Avery became co-owner of his in-law's sugar plantation, and in 1855 he became sole owner.
Edmund McIlhenny joined the Avery family before the Civil War, marrying Daniel and Sarah's daughter Mary Eliza Avery. In 1868, McIlhenny founded McIlhenny Company, and began manufacturing
Tabasco brand pepper sauce. In 1870, he received letters patent for his sauce-processing formula. That same basic process is still used today. In 1938, his son,
Edward Avery McIlhenny established a
nutria farm on Avery Island, Louisiana, near the factory where the company that bears his family name makes Tabasco sauce. According to company history, McIlhenny bought his stock of nutrias from a farm near New Orleans, so he was not the first to introduce the creature, a native of southern Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, to North America. What is certain, though, is that McIlhenny, for reasons unknown, released an unknown but probably large number of nutrias into the wild from the confines of Avery Island, and from there they fanned out and proliferated. Avery Island was hit hard in September 2005 by
Hurricane Rita. According to
The New York Times, the family spent $5 million on constructing a -high levee, pumps, and back-up generators to ensure that future hurricanes will not disrupt Tabasco sauce production.
Bird sanctuary at Avery Island Under the Avery/McIlhenny family's management, Avery Island has remained somewhat protected, inhabited by many animal species, although the many plants are non-native.
Edward Avery McIlhenny, or "Mr. Ned" as he was affectionately known, founded this bird colony—later called
Bird City—around 1895 after
plume hunters had slaughtered
egrets by the thousands to provide feathers for ladies'
hats. Edward gathered eight young egrets, raised them in captivity on the island, and released them in the fall to migrate across the
Gulf of Mexico. The following spring the birds returned to the island with others of their species, a migration that continues today. McIlhenny's illustrated and written documentation of plant and animal life on Avery Island was donated to the Louisiana State University library.
Non-native plants Edward McIlhenny introduced numerous varieties of
azaleas,
camellias,
papyrus sedge, and other non-native plants to the Island's
ecosystem. When
oil was discovered on the Island in 1942, he ensured that production crews bypassed
live oak trees and buried
pipelines (or painted them green) so the petroleum extraction did not harm the aesthetics. Today
Jungle Gardens and
Bird City are open to the public. ==Geography==