About Cane River Creole National Historical Park
Cane River Creole National Historical Park was established on November 2, 1994, to preserve two French Creole cotton plantations along Cane River Lake in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Oakland and Magnolia survive with their landscapes, outbuildings, furnishings, and artifacts largely intact, which makes them the most complete Creole cotton plantations in the country: 65 historic structures and more than a million artifacts in all. The National Park Service uses them to tell the story of plantation agriculture from every side, owners, enslaved workers, overseers, skilled tradespeople, and the tenant farmers and sharecroppers who worked the same fields for two centuries after emancipation. The park is a stop on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
Oakland began in the 1780s with the Prud'homme family; Emanuel Prud'homme, among the first planters to grow cotton in the area, started the main house in 1818, and the family held the land for seven generations. Its oak allée, bottle garden, pigeonnier, carpenter shop, and the plantation store that operated until 1983 are all still standing, and the site is both a National Historic Landmark and a Bicentennial Farm. Magnolia traces to a 1753 French land grant to Jean Baptiste LeComte; Ambrose LeComte II assembled the plantation in the 1830s, and management passed to his son-in-law Matthew Hertzog in 1852. Union troops burned Magnolia's main house during the 1864 Red River Campaign, and the family rebuilt after the war. Magnolia's gin barn holds two cotton gins and a rare 1830s mule-powered cotton press, the last of its kind still in its original location. The main house there remains privately owned and closed, but the plantation store, overseer's house, blacksmith shop, slave and tenant quarters, gin barn, cotton picker shed, and carriage house are open to visitors.
Collections and Research Services
The park's museum collection, drawn from the plantations themselves, exceeds one million objects and documents, and the NPS website publishes photo galleries of artifacts organized around people, places, and stories. This is not a genealogical reading room, but descendants of Cane River families, Creole, enslaved, and free, will find the interpreted structures and the NPS ethnography of Magnolia useful context. Natchitoches Parish records and parish church registers are the usual next step; see our guides to free family history research and finding where someone is buried.
Planning Your Visit
Oakland and Magnolia are separate sites south of Natchitoches, so plan on one to two hours at each, or three to four hours for the whole park. Grounds and outbuildings at both plantations are open Wednesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and closed Monday, Tuesday, and all federal holidays. The Oakland main house is open for self-guided tours on Saturdays and Sundays only, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The park's visitor center occupies the historic Texas and Pacific Railway Depot in Natchitoches on the same Wednesday-to-Sunday schedule. There is no entrance fee and the park does not sell federal lands passes; donations are accepted at the Oakland and Magnolia stores. Groups of 10 or more should reserve at least two weeks ahead at (318) 352-0383, ext. 200. Park headquarters is at 1927 Remembrance Way, Natchitoches, LA 71457. Current hours, directions to each plantation, and alerts are at nps.gov/cari. For the statewide picture, the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans holds the state's largest collection of Louisiana history.
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