Laurel Valley

Laurel Valley outlived its own mill by most of a century. Sugar production stopped in 1926, but the shotgun houses and Creole cabins survived the Civil War burning of the main house, and Boudreaux's home of 1816 is the oldest building. Up to 135 people were enslaved here before the war. Hurricane Betsy damaged the mill in 1965, the district joined the National Register in 1978, and film crews have used it as a Deep South set for Interview with the Vampire and Ray. Hurricane Ida in 2021 took more than a dozen original buildings.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Laurel Valley Village — steps away
  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 — 2.3 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 — 7.8 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.
• Southdown Plantation and Terrebonne Museum — 14 mi
  A Greek Revival sugar plantation house in Houma, worked by 233 enslaved people by 1852, with the last Terrebonne mill's story and a worker's cabin of about 1885.

More markers nearby

• City of Thibodaux / Ville de Thibodaux — 1.0 mi
• Rienzi Plantation House — 1.7 mi
• Moses, Allen Chapel, Calvary Cemeteries — 1.8 mi
• C.M. Washington High School — 1.8 mi