Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette

For its first sixty years the town carried a river's name. Jean Mouton gave land for a chapel at the site, the area was chosen as the parish seat in 1824 and called Vermilionville for the Vermilion River, and the legislature approved its incorporation in 1836. Only in 1884 was it renamed Lafayette, for the French general who aided the Continental Army. The city and parish governments were consolidated in 1996, so the general's name now covers both the town and the parish around it.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vermilionville — 1.7 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.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 7.5 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 13 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• General Alfred Mouton — steps away
• Lafayette Museum / Le Musée de Lafayette — steps away
• St. John Cathedral Oak — steps away
• The Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist — 0.2 mi