Natchitoches...or NAK-uh-tush locally

Steel Magnolias House B&B, Natchitoches, LA

On Saturday, we landed at Chicot State Park to spend a few days camping. This is a huge park that skirts the edge of Chicot Lake, and that offers fishing, boating, camping, hiking trails and an arboretum. The huge cypress, beech and magnolia trees provide a canopy of soft shade over the whole area...very pretty.

Natchitoches, Louisiana iron benches

On Sunday, we drove north to Natchitoches, locally prounounced NAK-uh-tush. A tour guide explained that it's the French pronunciation of the Spanish spelling of a Caddo Indian word, quintessential Creole culture. In any case, it's a beautiful little town with lots of pretty bed-and-breakfasts, including one that was used in the filming of Steel Magnolias. The Cane River floats past the French style downtown business district. The buildings are complete with ornamental ironwork similar to New Orleans.

There are also iron benches that line Canal Street with the names of prominent citizens and businesses from the 1950's and earlier, worked into the back of the bench. Each bench has baskets of flowers nearby, making for a picturesque springtime town. There are a number of old homes in Natchitoches, though unfortunately no explanation of their importance or lineage could be found in the materials we received at the visitor center.

Oakland Plantation entrance
with giant oak trees

We drove south on a scenic route to Oakland Plantation, a once-thriving farm last owned by the eighth generation of the Prud'homme family, now run by the National Park Service. Oakland, originally 1500 acres and named Bermuda Plantation, was granted by the Spanish government to Emanuel Prud'homme in the 1790's. By 1821 the main house had been built along with several other outbuildings. The acreage was divided almost evenly among two brothers after the Civil War into Oakland on one side and Ataho on the other side of the Cane River. The Oakland plantation grew tobacco and indigo early on, but switched to cotton as its main cash crop later, the first farm to raise cotton on a large scale west of the Mississippi River.

When the Civil War brought decimation and arson to much of the homes by the retreating Union soldiers during the Red River Campaign, Oakland was surprisingly spared, perhaps due to the ingenuity of the women of the house at the time, though the exact reason is lost to the annals of history. One legend is that a quick thinking Mrs. Prud'homme put her children in red caps, a sign of the dreaded scarlet fever. What is not lost to time, though, is all the family history, as the remaining ancestors still live in the area and occasionally drop by to provide firsthand accounts of their life on the plantation (and to argue with each other about the exact stories).

Oakland Plantation outbuildings
and giant pecan trees with Resurrection ferns

The guide gave a thorough account of the family's history, complete with a tour of the house. The park service has since furnished several rooms as the Prud'hommes had them in the 1950's, and several other rooms as the family had them in the 1840's. The master bedroom still contains the first Prud'hommes' bed, a 13 foot tall four-poster bed constructed inside the house in the 1820's of virgin African mahogany, a tree that has been out of existence since the 1880's. It was a fascinating look back at Louisiana plantation life.

There were also several other buildings on the property, including an overseer's house, the doctor's house, a number of small barns, a general store, and some original slave quarters. The slave quarters were converted to sharecroppers' homes after emancipation, and then into tenant-farmers' homes. The last tenant-farmer moved out in 1970. The Prud'hommes continued to farm the land until 1984, making this property a certified bi-centennial farm. Wow. And what an unusual family to pass along so much history, knowledge and heirloom antique furniture from one generation to the next without really replacing anything or selling the whole place. The family donated the entire farm with all the furnishings (over 870,000 items!!) to the park service in 1997 to preserve the legacy.

Brick Slave Quarters at Magnolia Plantation

We also visited Magnolia Plantation, whose land was granted to the LeCompte family in 1753. Descendants of the family (the Hertzogs) still own the main house and most of the land. The outbuildings have been donated to the National Park Service, however, including eight unusual brick two-room cabins, which replaced the original slave quarters (probably made of wood) in the 1850's or 1860's.

Gin/Press Barn at Magnolia Plantation

The other fascinating features of this farm are the cotton gin and two cotton presses, all in the gin/press barn. The older wooden screw-type cotton press, from 1835, pressed cotton that had already been ginned (lint mechanically separated from the seeds). It was first powered by mules and rose to a height of 30 feet when in use. The press simply compressed clean cotton into bales, weighing about 450 lbs each, to be brought to market. The steam-powered double cotton gin and hydraulic press, from the late 1800's, combined both the ginning and baling (or pressing) operations in one machine, dramatically speeding up the process of readying the cotton for sale. This was a state of the art operation for its time and allowed the LeCompte/Hertzog descendants the ability to gin and press cotton for many years. The equipment was in use until 1939. How interesting!

One interesting tidbit to note about our travels...though we try to eat in local restaurants when we are out and about, we are not always successful in our choices. Let us just say that we have only mentioned in writing those places and meals we actually enjoyed. There have been many, many others whose selection we made without consulting locals or referencing Yelp, and whose 'food', poor service, deplorable conditions, etc we have not enjoyed. Some meals in the last few days, as in some other states, have fallen into this category. Yuck.