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 slaves and free people of color—all contributed to the historical tradition of cultural diversity in the Teche region. The site features a plantation home and reproduction Acadian-style farmstead. Slavery is 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 eventually, 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.