Fontainebleau Plantation Sugar Mill

The ruin stood at the center of a works that was never only sugar. The enslaved workforce also ran a sawmill and brick kilns, dug a canal to the lake, and loaded schooners for New Orleans, where some of the brick and timber reportedly went into public buildings, the Customs House among them. The sugar house used steam-powered presses and open kettles in a row called the Jamaica train. Crop losses, the Panic of 1837 and falling prices kept the estate borrowing against the people it held, and the sugar never paid for itself.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fontainebleau State Park — 0.7 mi
  Lakeshore park on the Northshore where Tchefuncte potters, Acolapissa and Choctaw lived, and where 153 people were enslaved at Marigny's sugar and brick plantation by 1840; the mill ruin still stands.

More markers nearby

• The Enslaved — steps away
• Native Peoples — 0.3 mi
• Pottery Hill — 1.3 mi
• Battle of Lake Pontchartrain — 1.6 mi