Franklin Parish

Franklin Parish exists because of a state senator. John Winn pushed the 1843 act that carved it from parts of Ouachita, Catahoula and Madison parishes, and land for the seat, Winnsborough, was bought the next year. The town became the seat in 1846 but was not incorporated until March 18, 1902, with Captain William Phillip Power as its first mayor. The parish peaked at 32,382 people in 1940 and counted 19,774 in 2020, about three in four of them living in rural areas.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge — 22 mi
  Nearly 80,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest and oxbow lakes, with the state's largest population of Louisiana black bears and Theodore Roosevelt's 1907 hunt nearby.
• Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum — 30 mi
  A museum chartered in 1994 that tells the story of the Black pioneers of Monroe and northeast Louisiana, with local art, quilts and the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail's only Ouachita Parish stop.
• Chennault Aviation and Military Museum — 31 mi
  A Monroe museum that began as a 1986 reunion of Selman Field airmen and now holds Flying Tigers displays, Delta's Monroe beginnings and a park of retired aircraft.
• Masur Museum of Art — 32 mi
  A 1929 limestone Tudor house on South Grand Street, built by a Monroe lumberman and given to the city in 1963 by the Masur family to become its art museum.

More markers nearby

• Fred Carter, Jr. — 0.4 mi
• Lainey Wilson — 6.2 mi
• Jerry Cupit — 6.2 mi
• Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Chennault — 8.5 mi