Cane River Creole National Historical Park, Historic plantation complex in Natchitoches Parish, US

Cane River Creole National Historical Park is a 63-acre park in Natchitoches Parish holding two French Creole cotton plantations, Oakland and Magnolia, along Cane River Lake. Together they contain 65 historic structures and more than a million artifacts, the most intact French Creole cotton plantations in the United States. At Magnolia, a small log cabin with a rusty corrugated metal gable roof and a weathered slat fence stands in a grassy field near trees and water.

Jean Baptiste LeComte received a French land grant in 1753 and established Shallow Lake plantation, growing tobacco and subsistence crops. By the early 19th century the family produced cotton and expanded its holdings; in the 1830s Ambrose LeComte II acquired the land that became Magnolia. Union troops burned Magnolia's main house during the Red River Campaign, and the LeComte-Hertzog family rebuilt it and turned to sharecropping.

In colonial Louisiana "Creole" meant New World people and goods of Old World stock, and it applied to those born in Louisiana under French and Spanish rule regardless of ethnicity. The Prud'hommes of Oakland and the LeComtes of Magnolia were French Creole families. Descendants of the workers along the Cane River still carry on many of their traditions, and the park is a site on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

The park is located along Highway 494 in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and the National Park Service offers guided tours through both plantations. You should wear comfortable shoes and allow plenty of time to walk through the many buildings and grounds.

The Magnolia gin barn holds a rare 1830s mule-powered cotton press, the last of its kind still standing where it was built. The park also keeps over a million artifacts, and the last Black family left Magnolia in 1968. The main house at Magnolia is privately owned and closed to visitors.