Welcome to Leonville

The zydeco accordionist Clifton Chenier is listed among Leonville's notable natives, though his birth in 1925 is recorded at Opelousas. His father, Joseph, farmed and played a single-row accordion at local dances, taking the boy along; his uncle Morris played fiddle, and his brother Cleveland later played washboard with him. Clifton began on accordion around 1947, after field work and a job at a Gulf Oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. By 1950 the two brothers were playing a club in Basile.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 7.0 mi
  A heritage park in Opelousas built around the Venus House of about 1791, the home of a free Creole woman of color, Marie Francois Venus, with an old schoolhouse, Methodist church and the visitor center's zydeco music exhibit.
• Atchafalaya Welcome Center — 18 mi
  A state welcome center inside the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp, with exhibits on Basin history and life, a film, a crawfishing boat and French-speaking staff.
• Vermilionville — 18 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 19 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.

More markers nearby

• Academy of the Sacred Heart — 4.7 mi
• Port Barre — 5.1 mi
• Grand Coteau — 5.9 mi
• Bayou Courtableau at Bayou Teche Headwaters — 6.0 mi