Oakland Plantation

The house went up in stages, over more than a decade, on land that cotton had made among the richest in Louisiana. In 1850 the parish counted about 4,455 enslaved people against 2,507 whites, and by 1860 about 9,000 enslaved people worked its plantations. Their labor made estates like this one possible, and Red River steamboats carried the cotton they grew to market. The front of the house has not changed since it was built, while the back was altered in the 1960s.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Bistineau State Park — 7.2 mi
  A 903-acre state park on a lake the Great Raft made, opened in 1946 with a separate section for Black visitors from 1956, and now known for cypress water and a lake that is drawn down.
• R. W. Norton Art Gallery — 13 mi
  A free art museum and 40 acres of azalea gardens in Shreveport, founded in 1946 on Rodessa oil money, with Remington and Russell, an Audubon folio and no photography allowed.
• Spring Street Museum — 14 mi
  An 1866 bank building downtown that also held a Freedman's Savings and Trust branch in 1870, now a free LSUS-run museum with a Victorian parlor and the original vault.
• Shreveport Municipal Auditorium — 14 mi
  The Art Deco hall of 1929 where the Louisiana Hayride went out over KWKH from 1948 to 1960 and where Elvis Presley first played Shreveport on October 16, 1954.

More markers nearby

• The Arrest of Isaac Williams and his Men — 3.5 mi
• Ashpoint Plantation — 7.5 mi
• "Hell's Angels" — 10 mi
• Linebacker II (The Christmas Bombings) — 10 mi