Mysteries of the Wetlands

The rougarou has an old name behind it: French loup-garou, the werewolf, which French settlers or French Canadians probably brought to Louisiana. Folklorist Barry Jean Ancelet calls the tale common across French Louisiana, and it is said to roam swamps, cane fields and woodlands from Acadiana to the New Orleans area. Other versions give the curse a span of 101 days, passed on through blood. Writer Peter Matthiessen thought the Ojibwe word rugaru, sometimes linked to the creature, is itself a corruption of the French, spread by trappers.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Southdown Plantation and Terrebonne Museum — 6.7 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.
• Laurel Valley Village — 7.7 mi
  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 — 8.5 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.
• Mandalay National Wildlife Refuge — 8.9 mi
  A 4,212-acre refuge of freshwater marsh and cypress-tupelo swamp southwest of Houma, with a nature trail to a boardwalk and observation deck and mostly boat-only access.

More markers nearby

• Tomb Of Henry Schuyler Thibodaux — 0.3 mi
• Sugar Row Plantations — 2.7 mi
• Southdown High School — 6.4 mi
• Orange Grove — 6.4 mi