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Vinton is a town in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 3,338 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Lake Charles Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The Old Spanish Trail, which was neither old nor Spanish, wandered north and south of what is now U. S. Hwy. 90 in large part because of the unstable roadbed. The chief means of outside travel in the Parish relied on riverboats plying the Sabine and Calcasieu Rivers. Much of the marsh and bayous remained impassable. River travel made Lake Charles possible, just as mining for sulfur led to the founding of Sulphur. There had been numerous attempts to improve transportation throughout the 19th century. Confederate soldiers in 1863 cut a road extending from Niblett’s Bluff on the Sabine River to Alexandria, but it never developed into a major artery. Settlers had long been in the Vinton area. Jean Baptise Granger settled acreage between what is now Vinton and Big Woods about 1827, one of the first pioneers of the area. Even so, the area remained sparsely populated.

Geography was not the main reason the area had few settlers. From the beginning, the Spanish and French disputed the western boundary of Louisiana. When America bought the territory, they inherited the dispute. In 1806, when negotiations bogged down, a neutral strip or buffer zone was created. Both countries agreed not to claim the land in question, referred to as the Rio Hondo Territory. Starting in 1810, both governments removed all settlers in the Rio Hondo Territory, which included a sizable portion of modern Calcasieu Parish. This policy of forced relocation continued until after the Civil War.

The parish, and Vinton itself, might have remained an undeveloped rural backwater if two signal events had not changed that forever. The first, which had the greatest material impact on the entire community, was the decision by J. Pierpont Morgan’s Louisiana & Texas Railroad Company to construct a railroad from New Orleans to Beaumont, Texas. The second, and most important for Vinton, was the arrival of a former professor from Indiana named Dr. Seaman Knapp.

Timber brought the railroad. The part of Louisiana that included Calcasieu Parish was also home to the finest longleaf pine in the world. When combined with the stands of cypress and other hardwood lumber, logging was a lucrative prospect. The railroad gave life to Vinton, starting with a switching track. Although there would be a depot later, Vinton began as a whistle-stop called Blair. The source of the name is unknown. Some have speculated that the railroad siding took its name from a local family. However, no family named Blair was in residence in the area at that time. Dr. Seaman A. Knapp completed the founding of Vinton. Precisely what brought Dr. Knapp to Louisiana is unclear. Formerly the president of the Iowa Agricultural College in Ames, Dr. Knapp arrived in Lake Charles in 1884 and went to work running an agricultural business for land developer Jabez B. Watkins. In 1887, he quit his job with Watkins and opened his own land company (some sources claim Dr. Knapp started his company in 1885, but the evidence is inconclusive).

Watkins was a native of Lawrence, Kansas who came to Lake Charles in 1883. Using English capital, Watkins bought 500,000 acres (2,000 km2) of prairie and marshland in Southwest Louisiana. To bring in settlers, he advertised in newspapers across the nation. It is assumed that Dr. Knapp was one of the settlers Watkins attracted to the area. It is also assumed that Dr. Knapp was the leading force behind the first settler in what would become the township of Vinton.

Dr. Knapp purchased from the U. S. Government the 160-acre (0.65 km2) tract of land that would form the basis of the town. At the time, he paid $2.50 an acre. On October 17, 1887 Robert F. Evans, also an Iowa native, purchased an additional 640 acres (2.6 km2). The sources are unclear if the acreage was then sold to Dr. Knapp or Mr. George Horridge. However, the records show that the Southern Real Estate and Guaranty Company bought all land tracts by April 1889. The land was divided into lots and sold at prices ranging between 10 to 25 dollars each. In time, thirty blocks extended the original twelve-block plot of land. When the post office was registered with the U. S. Postmaster General, Vinton, Dr. Knapp’s Iowa hometown, was chosen as the name of the settlement. However, when the U. S. Postmaster designated the name, he left no explanation for his choice so there remains some doubt about the origin of the name.

It should be noted that it is possible that Dr. Knapp was responsible for the large influx of settlers from Vinton, Iowa. The Horridge, Stevenson, Eddie, Ferguson, Stockwell, Morgan, Nelson, Fairchild, Banker, Hall, and Haskill families were Iowa transplants. Some streets still bear the name of those families. Shortly after construction of the first homes came a sawmill, the Methodist Church, and the first public school building. In 1890, Mrs. Mabel K. Kelly became the first teacher in Vinton. A larger school replaced the older structure in 1901.