Rayne Depot Square

Rayne grew as a prairie town on the Louisiana Western Railroad in the late 1800s, and the depot was where the country came to it. In 1887 a reporter for the Daily Picayune described the crowds there and noted a shipper arriving with bullfrogs from twenty-five miles to the south. Donat Pucheu, a French immigrant, sold frogs along with other wild game at his saloon, the Rayne Drop Inn. Frogs and the depot were tied together from the start.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vermilionville — 16 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 20 mi
  A National Park Service center in Eunice on the Cajun prairie, with exhibits on the Acadians who settled the prairies, a Courir de Mardi Gras display, free music and cooking demonstrations, and the shuttered Liberty Theatre nearby.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 22 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 24 mi
  A heritage park in Opelousas built around the Venus House of about 1791, the home of a free Creole woman of color, Marie Francois Venus, with an old schoolhouse, Methodist church and the visitor center's zydeco music exhibit.

More markers nearby

• Jacques Weil Company — steps away
• St. Joseph's Catholic Church & Cemetery — 0.2 mi
• Louisiana Frog Company — 0.4 mi
• Pouppeville — 0.8 mi