CANE RIVER CREOLE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK
Located in northwest Louisiana, just a few miles from Natchitoches, the state’s oldest town, Cane River Creole National Historical Park is part of the Cane River National Heritage Area.
The park includes Oakland Plantation, and just a few miles down the road, the Magnolia Plantation. The most intact examples we have in the USA, these two French Creole cotton plantations are both National Historic Landmarks. The 65 historic structures and over a million artifacts in this park have survived for 7-8 generations through good times, poverty, and war, and tell the stories of the plantation agriculture through the perspective of the land owners, enslaved workers, overseers, skilled workers, and tenant farmers who resided along the Cane River for over two hundred years. The history of this area is tied to the Creole Culture, a mixture of French, Spanish, African and Native American peoples from the late 1700s that settled along the forested banks of the Red River.
Together, the mixing of these peoples and their traditions, settled and farmed this area, leaving behind the grand plantation homes and communities supported by cotton, tobacco and indigo. Oakland Plantation, a National Bicentennial Farm, features the original plantation house, and 17 of its original outbuildings. Magnolia Plantation Complex, features 18 acres of outbuildings. You can tour on your own, or sign up for a guided tour.
For directions and more information, call (318) 352-0383 or visit www.NPS.gov/cari.
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