Epps House

Edwin Epps held Solomon Northup from about 1843 until January 1853, and the book Northup published that year made the cottage famous. Twelve Years a Slave was written in about three months with help from David Wilson and sold about 30,000 copies within three years. The state placed this marker in 1980, four years after the 1852 cottage moved to Bunkie from near Holmesville, in Avoyelles Parish. It reached the LSU Alexandria campus in 1999. A second marker nearby, placed by the university, tells of the same house and gives it a subtitle about Northup's road to freedom.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 0.2 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 — 9.5 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Kent Plantation House — 9.9 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.
• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 10 mi
  Two Confederate earthen forts on the Red River at Pineville, built with enslaved labor and never attacked, beside the remains of Bailey's Dam.

More markers nearby

• Epps House (Solomon Northup's Gateway To Freedom) — steps away
• Headquarters 1st Calvary Division, Army of West La., May 8, 1864 — 0.3 mi
• Town of Lecompte — 6.1 mi
• Little Walter — 8.5 mi