Photo, Print, Drawing Oakland Plantation, 4386 Louisiana Highway 494, Bermuda, Natchitoches Parish, LA Cane River Creole National Historical Park Cane River National Heritage Area

Title

• Oakland Plantation, 4386 Louisiana Highway 494, Bermuda, Natchitoches Parish, LA

Other Title

• Cane River Creole National Historical Park Cane River National Heritage Area

Names

• Historic American Landscapes Survey, creator
• Prud'homme, Jean Pierre Emanuel
• Prud'homme, Jean Pierre Philippe
• Rousseau, Nicholas
• Prud'homme, Pierre-Phanor
• Prud'homme, Catherine
• Prud'homme, Jacque Alphonse
• Prud'homme, Phanor
• Prud'homme, Alphonse
• Wayne, John
• U.S. National Park Service (NPS), Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units (CESU) Grant, sponsor
• U.S. National Park Service (NPS), National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT), contractor
• University of Arkansas, Department of Landscape Architecture, contractor
• Erdman, Kimball, project manager
• Cook, Jordan, field team
• Crowley, Rebekah, field team
• Moore, Sydney, field team
• Church, Jason, project manager
• Reed, Megan Suzann, field team supervisor
• Erdman, Kimball, delineator
• Cook, Jordan, delineator
• Stevens, Christopher M., transmitter
• McPartland, Mary, transmitter

Created / Published

• Documentation compiled after 2000

Headings

• -  plantations
• -  cotton plantations
• -  tobacco plantations
• -  slavery
• -  slave quarters
• -  stores & shops
• -  agriculture
• -  agricultural facilities
• -  war (Civil War)
• -  wrought-iron gates
• -  allées
• -  oak trees
• -  cotton gins
• -  French Creole architectural elements
• -  gristmills
• -  rivers
• -  gasoline pumps
• -  tenant farming
• -  cotton industry
• -  tobacco industry
• -  Louisiana--Natchitoches Parish--Bermuda

Latitude / Longitude

• 31.665571,-93.002366

Notes

• -  For additional documentation, see also Bermuda Plantation (Prudhomme Family) (HABS LA-2-2) and Oakland Plantation (HABS LA-1192 series)
• -  Significance: The Prud'hommes farmed land along the Red/Cane River in Bermuda, Louisiana, thirteen miles south of the town of Natchitoches, for seven consecutive generations. Jean Pierre Emanuel (also Emmanuel) Prud'homme, a grandson of French colonist Jean Pierre Philippe Prud'homme, began growing tobacco and indigo as cash crops in the 1780s on land owned by Nicholas Rousseau. Louisiana was originally colonized by the French in 1682 but was transferred to the Spanish in 1763 and then back to the French in 1800 before being sold to the United States in 1803. About this time, technological advances such as the cotton gin in 1793 (for seed removal) and the screw press in 1801 (for baling) made cotton financially viable. However, tobacco growers in the Cane River region were initially reluctant to make the switch. Nevertheless, Emanuel embraced the change and invested in land, equipment, and a much larger enslaved labor force (53 in 1810, 74 in 1820). His efforts in pioneering cotton agriculture in the region made him a wealthy man. Emanuel and his wife celebrated the completion of the plantation's new Main House in 1821 with a trip to Paris to purchase furniture. A few years later, they had a live oak allée planted that connected their front door to the river. In the 1830s and 1840s, Emanuel's sixth child Pierre-Phanor Prud'homme assumed responsibility for managing his father's plantation with the assistance of an overseer. Emanuel and Phanor continued to purchase land and enslaved people and build mills, barns, and other agricultural outbuildings. They also built a cottage south of the main house for Phanor's growing family after his marriage in 1835. As with other plantations, they devoted a portion of their land to livestock, corn, and vegetable production to sustain their large labor force (96 in 1830, 144 in 1840 between Emanuel and Phanor), feed their draft animals, and provide supplemental income. Emanual died in 1845, and his wife Catherine died three years later. Phanor purchased much of his parents' plantation in 1850; 1250 acres on both sides of the Red (now Cane) River, 900 of which were in cultivation. This purchase also included 46 enslaved laborers (bringing Phanor's total to 126), equipment, and livestock. Like his father, Phanor continued to expandthe plantation and cotton production in the 1850s and 1860. Phanor's former house became the plantation doctor's residence in 1860. A new gin (housed in a new barn) and a new grist mill also began operating the same year, two years after the completion of Phanor's sawmill. However, Phanor's way of life began to change with the onset of the Civil War in 1861. Union forces finally arrived at the plantation in the spring of 1864. They spared most of the plantation's physical features, but the loss of crops, livestock, and enslaved people (Phanor owned 147 in 1860) devastated his wealth. Phanor died a few months after the war's end in 1865. Phanor's two sons purchased most of the remaining plantation and divided it between them in 1873. Jacque Alphonse Prud'homme (Alphonse I) received the land west of the Cane River, including the main house and its many outbuildings, which he renamed Oakland. Cotton farming resumed at Oakland with the same technologies and land patterns, although sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and hired hands, many of whom were formerly enslaved, now provided the labor. Thirty cabins remained in the Quarters area in 1880, and it's likely Alphonse I's tenant farmers and sharecroppers occupied many. Alphonse I built a store to support his workers and others in the area and to generate extra income, and from 1877 until the late 1960s, the store also served as the Bermuda Post Office. A combination of technological advancements, societal shifts, and financial and natural disasters wrought significant changes at Oakland Plantation over the next 100 years, although the pace was initially gradual. In the late 19th century, a railroad was built nearby, significantly reducing river traffic. Automobiles, improved roads and bridges, and the damming of the Cane River to form Cane River Lake continued this trend through the early 20th century. Alphonse I's son Phanor Prud'-homme (Phanor II) began managing the plantation in 1903, and he soon added a gas pump to the store to meet demand. Phanor II received much of the plantation after his father's death in 1919, although his brother inherited the parcel containing the Doctor's Cottage. A brief cotton boom created by World War I was quickly offset by agricultural depression in the 1920s, compounded by a boll weevil infestation affecting all American cotton farms and followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Black Americans from the rural South seeking financial opportunity and relief from racial prejudice began immigrating to northern and western cities, initiating a population shift that became known as the Great Migration. Phanor II and his son Alphonse Prud'homme (Alphonse II) supplemented cotton income by establishing a Fishing Camp for sportspeople north of the Main House in the 1920s, where they built a minnow pond and relocated several former slave cabins (including the Cook's Cabin, which is still extant). They also replaced the original boxwood parterre in front of the Main House with the Bottle Garden. The family continued increased tourist accommodations in the 1940s and 1950s with guided tours, antebellum costume parties, a “museum” of artifacts in one of the rooms of the Main House, new gas pumps, and a wood turnstile gate at the oak allée. These efforts culminated with Oakland serving as the set for the John Wayne film The Horse Soldier in 1959, further boosting the property's destination status. Mechanization of farm tasks in the 1950s replaced much of the manual labor, resulting in the departure of the remaining sharecropper families at Oakland. The Prud'hommes increasingly emphasized cultural tourism over agriculture. They added the iron entrance gate featured on this sheet in 1971, and the property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. In 1982, however, the plantation store closed and farm equipment was auctioned off two years later. After an extended period of advocacy, an act of Congress established Cane River Creole National Historical Park (CARI) in 1994, and by 1998, 45 acres of Oakland Plantation's core had been added to the park. In 2001 the property was designated a National Historic Landmark. The 2021 Oakland Cultural Landscape Report (CLR) updated previous determinations of historic significance to meet all four of the National Register of Historic Places' criteria, including Criterion A: Association with events that have made a significant contribution to our history; Criterion B: Association with the lives of persons significant with our past; Criterion C: Embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction; and Criterion D: Has yielded or may be likely to yield information important to history or prehistory. Criterion A encompasses a broad swath of North American history, from the French and Spanish colonial periods, US antebellum slavery, the Civil War, reconstruction, tenant farming, agricultural industrialization, the Great Migration, and the struggle for Civil Rights. Criterion B recognizes generations of enslaved Creoles and Africans, as well as the 200-year ownership of a single Creole family. Criterion C addresses Oakland Plantation as the epitome of a French Creole cotton plantation in the Red River region. Criterion D relates to the archeological potential of the former slave quarters area, but also the site's former structures, features, and functions.
• -  Survey number: HALS LA-14
• -  Building/structure dates: 1821 Initial Construction
• -  National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 79001073

Medium

• Measured Drawing(s): 6

Call Number/Physical Location

• HALS LA-14

Source Collection

• Historic American Landscapes Survey (Library of Congress)

Repository

• Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Control Number

• la0794

Rights Advisory

• No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government; images copied from other sources may be restricted. https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/114_habs.html

Online Format

• image
• pdf