A grass-covered conical mound ringed by a low wooden fence stands among bare spring oaks at the Marksville State Historic Site.
J. Stephen Conn / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Louisiana · Region

Alexandria & the Avoyelles Prairie

Tunica-Biloxi museum, Solomon Northup's Epps cottage and courthouse, Kent House, Frogmore and Forts Randolph and Buhlow in Louisiana's Alexandria and Avoyelles Prairie.

11 places to explore

The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, successor to the Tunica, Biloxi, Ofo and Avoyel peoples, has its reservation south of Marksville. Its museum holds the Tunica Treasure, grave goods left between 1731 and 1764 that the tribe regained in the late 1980s, and in 2022 the tribe took back the 42-acre Marksville mounds site. At Catahoula Lake, hundreds of thousands of ducks and shorebirds are regularly counted in early November.

Solomon Northup's years of enslavement run through the region: the cottage he helped build for Edwin Epps, now at LSU Alexandria, and the Marksville courthouse where he was freed on January 4, 1853, both on the 83-mile Northup Trail. Enslaved brickmakers left their fingerprints at Kent House, enslaved people built the walls at Forts Randolph and Buhlow, and a cabin at Frogmore, home to about 159 enslaved people, displays the words of formerly enslaved Louisianans.

Alexandria is also where Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, and Camp Beauregard's museum covers the 1940-41 Louisiana Maneuvers and the 761st Tank Battalion, a Black unit. Civilian Conservation Corps crews dug Valentine Lake in the 1930s. At Vidalia a riverwalk follows the line of the old town, moved in 1938 when the Army Corps of Engineers said a river cutoff required it.

What to See in Alexandria & the Avoyelles Prairie

11 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Natural Areas

Catahoula National Wildlife Refuge

Jonesville

A 25,000-acre bottomland refuge beside Catahoula Lake, a Ramsar wetland that is a major early-season stop for ducks on the Mississippi Flyway.

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Hikes & Trails

Valentine Lake Recreation Area

Gardner

A 46-acre Kisatchie National Forest lake dug by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s, with a campground and the head of the Wild Azalea Trail.

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Historic Sites

Avoyelles Parish Courthouse: Solomon Northup Marker

Marksville

The Marksville courthouse where Solomon Northup was freed in January 1853, with a marker and a 2026 bronze that shows him rising from the mud.

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A restored one-story Creole cottage of weathered wood siding with a tall red brick chimney and a ramp stands on a lawn beside an LSUA water tower.

Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom

Alexandria

The Creole cottage Solomon Northup helped build for the man who enslaved him, moved twice and now a small museum on the LSU Alexandria campus.

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A wooden boardwalk with railings runs beside a grassy earthwork slope under green trees at Fort Randolph.

Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site

Pineville

Two Confederate earthen forts on the Red River at Pineville, built with enslaved labor and never attacked, beside the remains of Bailey's Dam.

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A weathered white clapboard cabin with a brick chimney and a rusted metal roof stands on a lawn among bare trees at Frogmore.

Frogmore Cotton Plantation and Gins

Ferriday

A working cotton farm near Ferriday that tells the plantation story through the people enslaved there, with quarters, an ancient mound and a rare steam-engine gin.

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The raised Creole house at Kent House shows a shingled roof, a brick chimney, a white railed gallery and brick piers with a stair below.

Kent Plantation House

Alexandria

Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.

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Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum

Pineville

A National Guard museum in a replica WWII barracks at Camp Beauregard, built around the huge 1940-41 war games in Central Louisiana. Free.

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Towns & Gateways

A white wooden house with a columned front porch and brick steps has a framed portrait panel of Arna Bontemps beside its door.

Arna Bontemps African American Museum

Alexandria

The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

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Nine people stand on a brick walk in front of a whitewashed brick building with an arched entry beneath a sign reading MUSEUM.

Tunica-Biloxi Museum

Marksville

The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Marksville, built around the Tunica Treasure that the tribe won back in court.

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Attractions

Vidalia Landing Riverfront

Vidalia

A riverwalk on the Mississippi at Vidalia, built on the site of the old town that moved west in 1938 when the river was cut off.

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Stories from Alexandria & the Avoyelles Prairie

History

What Became of Patsey

On Bayou Boeuf, Solomon Northup watched cotton weighed every night and was ordered to whip an enslaved woman named Patsey over a bar of soap. Ten years later, Union soldiers who had read his book wrote down where she went.

3 min read

Alexandria & the Avoyelles Prairie rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.

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