William Edenborn

Edenborn came to Winn Parish by railroad. Born in Prussia in 1848, he emigrated at 19, started a wire mill in St. Louis in 1870 and sold American Steel and Wire in 1901. Then he turned south: his Louisiana Railway and Navigation line ran from Shreveport toward New Orleans, with a branch to Winnfield by 1903. Near Atlanta he bought the Coochie Brake, a cypress swamp of more than 700 acres, and cut it into railroad ties. He died in Shreveport in 1926. The tale that he tried monkeys as cotton pickers on his experimental farm is local lore.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 19 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 — 20 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.
• Colfax Massacre Memorial — 20 mi
  The 2023 granite memorial in Colfax to the Black men killed at the Grant Parish courthouse on April 13, 1873, which carries 57 names and replaced a state marker that called the massacre a riot.
• St. Augustine Church, Isle Brevelle — 20 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.

More markers nearby

• Gum Springs Bombing Range Accident Memorial — 7.0 mi
• The Nightriders — 7.4 mi
• Huey Pierce Long — 9.9 mi
• Bank of Winnfield & Law Office of Huey P. Long — 10.0 mi