1898-1899 (ULL Walk of Honor)

Several towns wanted the new school. On January 5, 1900, the board chose Lafayette over New Iberia by 5 to 2. Lafayette's offer was $18,000 in cash, the proceeds of a two-mill parish tax voters had approved for ten years, and 25 acres donated by Crow and Maxim Girard. The Louisiana General Assembly had created the Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute on July 14, 1898, through Act 162, introduced by Robert Martin of St. Martin Parish. The first classes were still more than a year off.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vermilionville — 1.3 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 7.1 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 13 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• Dr. Edwin L. Stephens — steps away
• Pillars of Progress (Desegregation of SLI) — 0.2 mi
• Griffin House — 0.2 mi
• Amédé Ardoin / Dennis McGee — 0.3 mi