Farming Transitions

The machine that ended the plantation era had a slow start. John Daniel Rust won his first cotton-picker patent in 1933, and the Rust brothers demonstrated a picker in Mississippi in 1936, but it had serious faults and the war delayed adoption. International Harvester built a commercially successful one in 1944. Early machines picked a single row yet could replace up to 40 hand laborers, and hybrid cotton and defoliants let growers harvest in one pass instead of three or four hand pickings. Historians cite the picker as a factor in the Second Great Migration.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. Augustine Church, Isle Brevelle — 3.5 mi
  The parish church at the heart of the Cane River Creoles of color, begun by Augustin Metoyer on his family's land and still holding Mass for the community that grew from Marie Thérèse Coincoin's children.
• Melrose Plantation — 3.7 mi
  The Cane River estate built on land granted to Louis Metoyer, son of Marie Thérèse Coincoin, with the Yucca House and African House, later an artists' retreat; guided tours Thursday to Sunday.
• Kisatchie National Forest: Longleaf Vista — 6.1 mi
  A free ridge-top overlook and 1.5-mile loop above the 8,700-acre Kisatchie Hills Wilderness on the Longleaf Trail Scenic Byway, in the forest Caroline Dormon helped win in 1930.
• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 8.6 mi
  Oakland and Magnolia, two Cane River cotton plantations kept as they stood, told through the enslaved families who worked them, the 1864 and 1804 freedom seekers and the tenant farmers who stayed into the 1960s.

More markers nearby

• Cash or Credit — steps away
• The Sound of Time (Magnolia Bell) — steps away
• A Very Valuable Man — steps away
• A French Connection (Magnolia Pigeonnier) — steps away