Jean Laffite

The festival version is a pirate who captured the city. The written record Lake Charles historian W. T. Block cites points elsewhere. By December 1817, he says, Jean Laffite's men had set up two camps for holding enslaved Africans in the Neutral Strip, one on Contraband Bayou and one at Ballew's Ferry on the Sabine. For the bayou he relies on an 1866 traveler's account in the Galveston Weekly News, which also calls it a depot for smuggled goods. Block treats the buried-treasure stories as legend, and the Louisiana Pirate Festival still opens each May with one.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Imperial Calcasieu Museum — 2.8 mi
  Lake Charles's history museum, founded by the Junior League in 1963, with parish artifacts, Claire Chennault's uniform and the Sallier Oak.
• Mardi Gras Museum of Imperial Calcasieu — 3.9 mi
  A 6,000-square-foot museum of southwest Louisiana Carnival with about 275 costume mannequins and 14 animated figures, opened in April 2026.
• Sam Houston Jones State Park — 9.1 mi
  A 1,087-acre park on the West Fork of the Calcasieu with longleaf pine, cypress-tupelo swamp, five trails, cabins and kayak rentals.
• Creole Nature Trail Adventure Point — 10 mi
  A free visitor center at the western gateway of Louisiana's only All-American Road, with exhibits on alligators, migrating songbirds and the estuary.

More markers nearby

• LaGrange High School — 1.3 mi
• Louisiana Baptist Orphanage — 3.1 mi
• Lake Charles High School Kilties — 3.2 mi
• Barbe Pier — 3.3 mi