Bayou Macon Settlements

The stream behind these farm settlements runs about 218 miles from Desha County, Arkansas, south between the Boeuf River and the Mississippi, and its banks touch five Louisiana parishes, Franklin among them. In May 1863 the 1st Kansas Volunteer Infantry saw action along it, near places then called Caledonia and Pin Hook. Upstream in East Carroll Parish, a 6,919-acre state wildlife management area, acquired in 1991, now protects part of the bayou's wooded bottomland margin for hunters and wildlife.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge — 25 mi
  Nearly 80,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest and oxbow lakes, with the state's largest population of Louisiana black bears and Theodore Roosevelt's 1907 hunt nearby.
• Lake Bruin State Park — 26 mi
  A state park on a Mississippi River oxbow near St. Joseph, named for a territorial judge who owned a plantation beside it, on a former fish hatchery site.

More markers nearby

• Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Chennault — 2.1 mi
• Gene King — 3.4 mi
• Al "Puddler" Harris — 6.4 mi
• Franklin Parish — 11 mi