The Way It Was

With my mom in town I ventured outside of NOLA to visit some of the plantations from the 1800's. It is amazing how flat the land is here and once outside of the city how much of the land is still occupied with acres and acres of sugar cane crop.

We started our day at the Laura Plantation, an old Creole Plantation that was run by several generations of Creole women - something that was not uncommon in the Creole culture, but was certainly an oddity of the time amongst the Americans who did business with them.

The land was comprised of the main house (shown at the right), several gardens both for flowers as well as crops for the workers and house owners to eat from, slave quarters and acres of land that needed harvesting. While only 2 slave quarters remained, when the plantation was running there were 3 miles of salve quarters, each measuring only 16 feet by 16 feet and housing 4-5 people.

While no longer housing slaves, the old slave quarters were inhabited by residents until the early 1970's.

After the Laura Plantation we headed over to Oak Alley a more traditional "American Plantation" where we had a wonderful lunch of Po' Boys and Gumbo.

Overall a very insightful and fun trip out of the city...even though it was really really hot!