Bayou Folk Museum

Kate Chopin came here after her husband Oscar's New Orleans cotton business failed in 1879, to manage his family's small plantations and a general store. He died of malaria in December 1882 and left her about $42,000 in debt; she kept the business going for nearly two years, sold it, and went back to St. Louis. Her first novel, At Fault, drew on widowhood, and Bayou Folk, published in 1894, gathered her Cane River stories. The house, built by Alexis Cloutier in the early nineteenth century, burned on 1 October 2008.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. Augustine Church, Isle Brevelle — 4.9 mi
  The parish church at the heart of the Cane River Creoles of color, begun by Augustin Metoyer on his family's land and still holding Mass for the community that grew from Marie Thérèse Coincoin's children.
• Melrose Plantation — 5.0 mi
  The Cane River estate built on land granted to Louis Metoyer, son of Marie Thérèse Coincoin, with the Yucca House and African House, later an artists' retreat; guided tours Thursday to Sunday.
• Kisatchie National Forest: Longleaf Vista — 6.5 mi
  A free ridge-top overlook and 1.5-mile loop above the 8,700-acre Kisatchie Hills Wilderness on the Longleaf Trail Scenic Byway, in the forest Caroline Dormon helped win in 1930.
• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 9.9 mi
  Oakland and Magnolia, two Cane River cotton plantations kept as they stood, told through the enslaved families who worked them, the 1864 and 1804 freedom seekers and the tenant farmers who stayed into the 1960s.

More markers nearby

• Big House — 5.0 mi
• African House and Clementine Hunter's Murals — 5.0 mi
• Clementine Hunter Home and Studio — 5.0 mi
• Ghana House — 5.1 mi