Streetcar Wheel

Electric interurban lines spread fast in the early 1900s: U.S. track grew from about 2,100 miles in 1900 to more than 15,500 by 1916. New Iberia and Jeanerette had one of their own, a lightweight, self-propelled electric car running down Highway 182. Keith Laperouse, a New Iberia native, says few people knew it by the name interurban. Traces of the rails can still be seen beside the highway, and near Jeanerette High School they run parallel to other railroad tracks. In his view New Iberia was a leader in railways then.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chitimacha Museum — 8.1 mi
  The Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Charenton: the tribe's account of its territory, the French wars and enslavement, the land held in trust, and river cane baskets.
• Shadows-on-the-Teche — 11 mi
  A National Trust site in New Iberia built 1831 to 1834 for sugar planters David and Mary Weeks, now interpreted around the 1,112 people the Weeks family enslaved, among them Charity Polk, Amos, Patty, Isaac and Louisa.
• Grevemberg House Museum — 12 mi
  Franklin's 1851 Greek Revival townhouse, the official St. Mary Parish museum, saved from demolition by one vote and set in the Franklin Historic District on Bayou Teche.
• Jungle Gardens and Avery Island — 15 mi
  A 170-acre garden and wildfowl refuge on a Gulf Coast salt dome, founded by Edward Avery McIlhenny, on an island that was a Marsh sugar plantation worked by enslaved people before Tabasco and the 1862 salt works.

More markers nearby

• Steamboats — steps away
• Nicholas Provôt — steps away
• Harry B. Hewes House — 0.8 mi
• Beau Pre-Circa 1828 — 4.1 mi