Montgomery, Louisiana

Montgomery cannot agree on its own birthday. Accounts date the French trading post at Bon Dieu Falls to 1712 or to 1719, either way among the oldest sites in the state. General Thomas Woodward bought the land in 1840 and named it Creola Bluff, and the town took the name Montgomery in 1860. For decades it lived off the steamboats landing on the east bank of the Red River, until the railroad arrived in 1901. The census counted 160 residents in 1870, and the town peaked at 923 in 1970.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Melrose Plantation — 6.4 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.
• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 6.6 mi
  Oakland and Magnolia, two Cane River cotton plantations kept as they stood, told through the enslaved families who worked them, the 1864 and 1804 freedom seekers and the tenant farmers who stayed into the 1960s.
• St. Augustine Church, Isle Brevelle — 7.1 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.
• Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A reconstruction of the 1716 French fort beside the Natchitoches village, with a palisade of nearly 2,000 pine logs, a chapel and storeroom, and living-history programs, open Wednesday to Sunday.

More markers nearby

• The Nightriders — 6.2 mi
• Ghana House — 6.5 mi
• Clementine Hunter Home and Studio — 6.5 mi
• African House and Clementine Hunter's Murals — 6.5 mi