Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site

Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site explores the cultural interplay among the diverse peoples along the famed Bayou Teche in the early- and mid-19th century. People of Acadian, Creole, Native American, French, Spanish and African heritage — including enslaved people and free people of color — all contributed to the cultural diversity in the Teche region. The site features a plantation home and reproduction Acadian-style farmstead. The experiences of enslaved people are a large focus of the plantation home tour. 

Once part of the hunting grounds of the Attakapas Indians, this site became part of a royal French land grant first used as a vacherie, or cattle ranch. In the early 1800s, Pierre Olivier Duclozel de Vezin, a wealthy Creole, acquired this property to raise cotton, cattle and sugarcane. He built the Maison Olivier, the circa 1815 plantation house which is the central feature of the site. The structure is an excellent example of a Raised Creole Cottage, a simple and distinctive architectural form which shows a mixture of Creole, Caribbean and French influences.