The Nightriders

The West and Kimbrel gang survives mostly as local lore. Led by John West and Jackson Lawson Kimbrel, it is placed on the Harrisonburg Road from about 1866, when a Lieutenant Butts was reportedly robbed and shot near a spring. Tradition says wells along the road hid the bodies of travelers, up to forty in one. Even the end is uncertain: Easter Sunday 1870 in one telling, spring 1872 in another, when residents killed West and several others outside the law. Kimbrel is said to have escaped to Texas and been hanged there for a different murder.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 11 mi
  Oakland and Magnolia, two Cane River cotton plantations kept as they stood, told through the enslaved families who worked them, the 1864 and 1804 freedom seekers and the tenant farmers who stayed into the 1960s.
• Melrose Plantation — 13 mi
  The Cane River estate built on land granted to Louis Metoyer, son of Marie Thérèse Coincoin, with the Yucca House and African House, later an artists' retreat; guided tours Thursday to Sunday.
• St. Augustine Church, Isle Brevelle — 13 mi
  The parish church at the heart of the Cane River Creoles of color, begun by Augustin Metoyer on his family's land and still holding Mass for the community that grew from Marie Thérèse Coincoin's children.
• Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site — 15 mi
  A reconstruction of the 1716 French fort beside the Natchitoches village, with a palisade of nearly 2,000 pine logs, a chapel and storeroom, and living-history programs, open Wednesday to Sunday.

More markers nearby

• Montgomery, Louisiana — 6.2 mi
• William Edenborn — 7.4 mi
• Desadier School For Native Americans — 9.7 mi
• Gum Springs Bombing Range Accident Memorial — 11 mi