Spring Bayou

Spring Bayou is what is left of a river that moved away. Its lakes and coulees, with their French names, are abandoned Red River channels, and the outermost arc is Old River, a Mississippi distributary. The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe describes the Marksville mounds as standing on a bluff above Old River, and the wildlife area is best explored by boat from the launch. The marker belongs to the Atchafalaya Water Heritage Trail series, whose trail also crosses the Sarto bridge at Big Bend.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tunica-Biloxi Museum — 3.1 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 — 3.2 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 — 24 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.
• Louisiana State Penitentiary Museum — 26 mi
  The Angola museum outside the penitentiary gate, opened in 1997 on the history of crime and punishment in Louisiana, on ground where convicts were leased out as what 64 Parishes calls legal slave labor.

More markers nearby

• Marksville Mounds — 2.3 mi
• Holy Ghost Catholic Church — 3.0 mi
• Holy Ghost Catholic School — 3.1 mi
• Tunica-Biloxi Indian Reservation — 3.2 mi