Valenzuela Dans La Fourche

The colony was hard on the people sent to it. Governor Galvez had Canary Island families settled on Bayou Lafourche from 1779, and storms, flooding and poor harvests kept them on food relief into the early 1780s; an estimated one in five died in the first three years. Descendants of expelled Acadians settled just to the south in 1785. By 1830 American-owned sugar plantations had replaced the small farms, and many families moved to the Attakapas country or lower Terrebonne, where their settlements were known as brules.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• E. D. White Historic Site — 18 mi
  A National Historic Landmark house of about 1790 on Bayou Lafourche, built by enslaved people and home to two Whites, a governor and a Chief Justice, with an exhibit on the bayou's history.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 22 mi
  A Jean Lafitte National Historical Park center on Bayou Lafourche with Acadian and bayou-life exhibits, a 200-seat theater and ranger-guided boat tours to the E. D. White house.
• Whitney Plantation — 23 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• Laurel Valley Village — 24 mi
  A sugar plantation's workers' village south of Thibodaux, with cabins of about 1845, shotgun houses, a store and cemetery, and the 1887 strike and massacre in the parish around it.

More markers nearby

• African American Life — 4.1 mi
• Central Agricultural School — 4.1 mi
• Bicentennial Jazz Plaza — 4.1 mi
• All Roads Lead to Donaldsonville — 4.1 mi