Chemin-A-Haut State Park

Chemin-a-haut is French for "high road." It names a trail that followed the ridge along Bayou Bartholomew, which Native people used for hundreds of years to travel between present-day Arkansas and Louisiana for hunting and trading. The French began using it about 300 years ago, the Louisiana Sportsman reports. The park sits on that ridge, about 10 miles north of Bastrop off US 425.

The bayou below is the long story. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas it runs 359 miles from Jefferson County, Arkansas, to the Ouachita River near Sterlington and has the distinction of being the longest bayou in the United States. The Louisiana Sportsman calls it an old run of the Arkansas River, which moved to its present course about 2,000 years ago. French explorers crossed it in 1687; the name probably honors "Little Bartholomew, the Parisian," in Henri Joutel's party. Steamboats carried cotton and timber on it in Morehouse Parish before 1833, and in 1865 Federal cavalry under Colonel Embury Osband burned the captured steamer Jim Barkman on its supply route.

Chemin-A-Haut opened in 1935, among the earliest additions to Louisiana's state park system. It has camping, cabins, picnicking, boat rentals for Big Slough Lake, swimming pools in summer and an 8-mile equestrian trail. The address is 1456 State Park Road, Bastrop. Gates open 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday (November 2026); call the park for fees.