Gramercy Historical Marker

Gramercy's best-known tradition is built from willow logs. On Christmas Eve neighbors line the levee with bonfires, a custom scholars date to about 1880 to 1900 in this part of the river. Ronald St. Pierre, a Gramercy mayor, was the best-known builder: he began as a boy, then from 1984 raised pyres shaped like an Acadian cabin, a plantation house, riverboats, a locomotive, an oil rig and a replica of the state capitol. He stepped back after 1993 because of illness. By 1999 more than a hundred fires burned along the short stretch from Gramercy to Paulina.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Whitney Plantation — 2.2 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• Laurel Valley Village — 18 mi
  A sugar plantation's workers' village south of Thibodaux, with cabins of about 1845, shotgun houses, a store and cemetery, and the 1887 strike and massacre in the parish around it.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 19 mi
  A Jean Lafitte National Historical Park center on Bayou Lafourche with Acadian and bayou-life exhibits, a 200-seat theater and ranger-guided boat tours to the E. D. White house.
• E. D. White Historic Site — 20 mi
  A National Historic Landmark house of about 1790 on Bayou Lafourche, built by enslaved people and home to two Whites, a governor and a Chief Justice, with an exhibit on the bayou's history.

More markers nearby

• Lutcher — 0.5 mi
• Colonial Sugars Refinery — 0.6 mi
• Colonial Sugars Refinery — 0.6 mi
• Lutcher United Methodist Church — 0.7 mi