A Historic Landmark

The Sarto bridge reached the National Register on November 21, 1989, the day the state review committee first considered it, and was the first Louisiana bridge listed. Local people pushed it there: Adam Ponthieu Sr., Eleanor Blakewood Marshall, Marilyn B. Coco and Carlos A. Mayeux Jr. are named on this marker. The committee found it significant for transportation as a steel truss swing bridge, a type common in the early twentieth century and now rare in the state. Ponthieu's store and post office were listed in 2002 and now house the Big Bend Museum.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana State Penitentiary Museum — 14 mi
  The Angola museum outside the penitentiary gate, opened in 1997 on the history of crime and punishment in Louisiana, on ground where convicts were leased out as what 64 Parishes calls legal slave labor.
• Tunica-Biloxi Museum — 16 mi
  The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Marksville, built around the Tunica Treasure that the tribe won back in court.
• Avoyelles Parish Courthouse: Solomon Northup Marker — 17 mi
  The Marksville courthouse where Solomon Northup was freed in January 1853, with a marker and a 2026 bronze that shows him rising from the mud.
• Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site — 31 mi
  A cotton plantation worked by hundreds of enslaved people, whose names survive in an 1862 succession list; the Turnbull house and gardens, and the quarters nobody has yet found.

More markers nearby

• Bayou Des Glaises — steps away
• Big Bend: Development of a Community — steps away
• Sarto Old Iron Bridge — steps away
• Battle Of Yellow Bayou — 6.4 mi