Grant Parish and Town of Colfax

Grant Parish was a political creation. The Reconstruction legislature carved it from parts of Winn and Rapides parishes on March 4, 1869, the day Ulysses S. Grant took office, one of eleven parishes organized in those years to build Republican strength. The 1870 census counted 4,517 people, with freedmen a slight majority. Its seat took the name of Grant's first vice president, Schuyler Colfax. That politics is why the courthouse became the prize in the disputed election of 1872 and the target of a white militia on Easter Sunday 1873.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Colfax Massacre Memorial — steps away
  The 2023 granite memorial in Colfax to the Black men killed at the Grant Parish courthouse on April 13, 1873, which carries 57 names and replaced a state marker that called the massacre a riot.
• Melrose Plantation — 16 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.
• St. Augustine Church, Isle Brevelle — 16 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.
• Kisatchie National Forest: Longleaf Vista — 17 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.

More markers nearby

• Colfax Riot — 0.4 mi
• Battle of Calhoun's Landing — 1.1 mi
• Village of Dry Prong — 11 mi
• Bayou Folk Museum — 13 mi