Lake Martin

The Nature Conservancy manages Lake Martin's alligators as a resource, not just a sight. It closes the levee trail from June through October, when females nest along the wooded banks. It also works with alligator farmers, who collect eggs and raise the young, with some returned to the wild. The group says wild numbers have grown from under 100,000 to over two million since the 1967 listing. The lake is the core of Cypress Island Preserve, more than 9,000 acres of cypress-tupelo swamp, and the south end holds a rookery that is closed to boats from February through July.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — steps away
  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.
• Vermilionville — 5.8 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.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 6.6 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 — 7.0 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

• Wetlands — steps away
• American Alligator — steps away
• The Pellerin-Chauffe House — 4.0 mi
• Welcome to Parks — 4.4 mi