Mary Walker Marina

The dream began in the early 1940’s. Frank Wentzel was a horsetrader type and a gambling man. He had an idea: to sell cold drinks and bait to the fishermen who plied the waters of the bayou, the river and the Gulf. With two partners who put up $10 each, a small tract was bought at the edge of the bayou, and with a couple of buckets, ice, cold drinks, and bait for sale, the Mary Walker fish Camp opened for business.A young daughter, Rita, and a son, Frank Wentzel, jr., helped with the project. The two partners were later bought out. “We need a cabin,” said the elder Wentzel, and spying an unused piano crate that had housed a baby grand, the first structure went up, and in a matter of days, a pot bellied stove was going inside the black and yellow cabin, the first one that boasted a screened-in porch.