Crowley (North Avenue F)

Crowley was a sales pitch before it was a town. The Southwest Louisiana Land Company, run by brothers W. W. and C. C. Duson, advertised across the North and Midwest and ran excursion trains to bring buyers, and many early settlers were Midwestern wheat farmers who carried their skills over to rice. Prairie that sold for about $1.25 an acre in the mid-1880s was worth $35 to $65 once it was flooded for rice by 1902, when the town had ten large mills. The name honors Patrick Crowley, a railroad man who agreed to move his switch.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana Oil and Gas Park — 18 mi
  The roadside park at Jennings where Louisiana's oil industry began in 1901, with a replica derrick, a pioneers' plaque and Gator Chateau.
• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 20 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.
• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 28 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.

More markers nearby

• Senator John F. Kennedy Presidential Campaign Speech — steps away
• Crowley Louisiana Post Office 1913 — steps away
• David L. & Jeanette Ross May House — 0.5 mi
• Miller Stadium — 0.5 mi