Breaux Bridge, Louisiana / Pont de Breaux, Louisiane

Directions made this town's name. Firmin Breaux, an Acadian who settled the area around 1765, registered his cattle brand by 1774 and was among the region's largest landowners by 1786. In 1799 he built a rope-and-plank footbridge across Bayou Teche, anchored to pilings and two big live oaks. Travelers asked the way to Breaux's bridge, and the phrase outlasted the footbridge. A Daughters of the American Revolution marker in St. Martinville names him among the area's Patriots of the Revolution.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 5.0 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.
• Vermilionville — 7.2 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.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 11 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 — 11 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

• Legend of Bayou Teche / La Legende du Bayou Teche — steps away
• History of St. Bernard Catholic School — steps away
• Welcome to Breaux Bridge — steps away
• Birthplace of Bishop Jules Jeanmard — steps away