Moncla

Moncla owes its place to geology. About 2,000 years ago the Red River shifted course and isolated the Avoyelles Prairie, and a state and National Park Service marker at Spring Bayou says it left bluffs at Moncla that later made river crossings easier for settlers. A settlement grew on the south bank and took its name from Dr. Joseph Thibault Moncla, a French emigrant who lived from 1806 to 1883 and married Arsene Bordelon. It had a ferry, a steamboat landing, a stagecoach stop, a sawmill, a gin and a school, and a post office from 1896.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Avoyelles Parish Courthouse: Solomon Northup Marker — 5.8 mi
  The Marksville courthouse where Solomon Northup was freed in January 1853, with a marker and a 2026 bronze that shows him rising from the mud.
• Tunica-Biloxi Museum — 6.9 mi
  The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Marksville, built around the Tunica Treasure that the tribe won back in court.
• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 18 mi
  The Creole cottage Solomon Northup helped build for the man who enslaved him, moved twice and now a small museum on the LSU Alexandria campus.
• Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum — 21 mi
  A National Guard museum in a replica WWII barracks at Camp Beauregard, built around the huge 1940-41 war games in Central Louisiana. Free.

More markers nearby

• Poste Des Avoyelles — 5.1 mi
• Joffrion-Roy-Luke Home — 5.6 mi
• German Prisoner of War Camp — 5.7 mi
• Hypolite Bordelon House — 5.7 mi