Acadia Baptist Academy

The academy ran for fifty-six years and enrolled several thousand students, many of whom lived on campus, until it closed in 1973. The grounds then sat vacant for two years. In 1975 local Baptist leaders leased them and opened the Acadian Baptist Center, which drew more than 3,000 people in its first year with three full-time staff and has grown a motel, cabins, dormitories and a dining hall since. For the school's centennial in 2017, former boarders came back for a reunion and a Cajun cookout.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 7.9 mi
  A National Park Service center in Eunice on the Cajun prairie, with exhibits on the Acadians who settled the prairies, a Courir de Mardi Gras display, free music and cooking demonstrations, and the shuttered Liberty Theatre nearby.
• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 16 mi
  A heritage park in Opelousas built around the Venus House of about 1791, the home of a free Creole woman of color, Marie Francois Venus, with an old schoolhouse, Methodist church and the visitor center's zydeco music exhibit.
• Louisiana Oil and Gas Park — 24 mi
  The roadside park at Jennings where Louisiana's oil industry began in 1901, with a replica derrick, a pioneers' plaque and Gator Chateau.
• Vermilionville — 24 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.

More markers nearby

• Iry LeJeune — 6.4 mi
• Le Vieux Presbytère — 6.5 mi
• Johnson's Grocery — 6.6 mi
• City Of Eunice — 7.1 mi