Cleco Originated in Bunkie, LA

Cleco traces its start to a corporate reorganization. In 1935 engineer Floyd Wilson Woodcock reorganized Louisiana Ice & Utilities as Louisiana Ice & Electric after bankruptcy, and Bunkie's ice plant joined the company in 1938, when it also made ice in Alexandria and Baton Rouge. The Rea generating station followed in 1939, and the name Central Louisiana Electric Company dates from 1945. Bunkie, in other words, was one of the plants the company grew from, and Cleco's own account does not start there.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tunica-Biloxi Museum — 13 mi
  The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Marksville, built around the Tunica Treasure that the tribe won back in court.
• Avoyelles Parish Courthouse: Solomon Northup Marker — 14 mi
  The Marksville courthouse where Solomon Northup was freed in January 1853, with a marker and a 2026 bronze that shows him rising from the mud.
• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 21 mi
  The Creole cottage Solomon Northup helped build for the man who enslaved him, moved twice and now a small museum on the LSU Alexandria campus.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 29 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

More markers nearby

• How Bunkie Got Its Name — steps away
• Bunkie Post Office — steps away
• Bunkie Depot Museum — steps away
• Rays Ferry 1816 — 2.4 mi