Opelousas (Capital of Confederate Louisiana)

For about nine months Opelousas was where Louisiana's Confederate government sat, after Baton Rouge fell to Union forces in 1862 and before the capital moved on to Shreveport in 1863. The town it chose lay in a plantation parish whose farming rested on enslaved African labor, so the government that gathered here was that of a slaveholding state. Less than six years after the capital left, the same parish saw the Opelousas massacre of September 1868, when white mobs killed an estimated 150 to 300 Black people and Republican editor C. E. Durand. The two episodes belong together.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 0.6 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.
• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 21 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.
• Vermilionville — 23 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.
• Atchafalaya Welcome Center — 25 mi
  A state welcome center inside the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp, with exhibits on Basin history and life, a film, a crawfishing boat and French-speaking staff.

More markers nearby

• Jim Bowie Oak — steps away
• Opelousas — steps away
• Delta Theater — steps away
• Manon's Corner — steps away