Restoration Park

A great blue heron stands in Restoration Park, a sculpture by Edmund Williamson, on ground that spent most of a century as something else. The park's own history pages open before people, with a prehistory divided into the Paleoindian, Archaic and Woodland periods, and then name two modern phases: the Gravel Pit Years, 1900 to 1990, and the Wetland Phase from 1990 on. The wetland work includes a plant survey in 1997 and watershed alterations in 2000, and the pages carry yearly summaries starting in 2002, last updated in November 2003.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Biedenharn Museum and Gardens — 2.5 mi
  The 1913 Monroe home of the man the museum credits with first bottling Coca-Cola, with a Coca-Cola museum, his daughter's Bible collection and her gardens.
• Masur Museum of Art — 3.6 mi
  A 1929 limestone Tudor house on South Grand Street, built by a Monroe lumberman and given to the city in 1963 by the Masur family to become its art museum.
• Chennault Aviation and Military Museum — 6.8 mi
  A Monroe museum that began as a 1986 reunion of Selman Field airmen and now holds Flying Tigers displays, Delta's Monroe beginnings and a park of retired aircraft.
• Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum — 8.8 mi
  A museum chartered in 1994 that tells the story of the Black pioneers of Monroe and northeast Louisiana, with local art, quilts and the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail's only Ouachita Parish stop.

More markers nearby

• The Twin City Jamboree — 1.6 mi
• Doug Duffey — 1.7 mi
• First Southern Pine Fourdrinier Kraft Linerboard in United States — 1.9 mi
• Trenton — 2.2 mi