Rays Ferry 1816

Bayou Boeuf is the waterway Samuel Bass's 1852 letters named when he told Solomon Northup's friends where to find him. Reuben Ray's ferry crossed it decades earlier, on the road between Opelousas and Avoyelles. Early ferries were private businesses: a landowner posted a surety bond, here dated September 19, 1816, and ran the crossing for profit where no public bridge existed. How long Ray kept it going is not known. Descendants of Calvin and Ellen Ray placed the marker in 2023, beside the Bayou Boeuf bridge on Louisiana 115.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tunica-Biloxi Museum — 15 mi
  The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Marksville, built around the Tunica Treasure that the tribe won back in court.
• Avoyelles Parish Courthouse: Solomon Northup Marker — 15 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.
• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 19 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.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 28 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

More markers nearby

• Bunkie Post Office — 2.3 mi
• Bunkie Depot Museum — 2.3 mi
• Cleco Originated in Bunkie, LA — 2.4 mi
• How Bunkie Got Its Name — 2.4 mi