3 Best Sights in St. Francisville, Side Trips from New Orleans

The 18,000 acres that make up the notorious Angola prison are a half-hour drive from St. Francisville, at the dead end of Highway 66. With a prison population of about 6,000 inmates, this is one of the largest prisons in the United States. Nicknamed "The Farm," Angola was once a working plantation, with prisoners for field hands. Now it produces 4 million pounds of vegetables each year, which feed 11,000 inmates across the state. The prison has been immortalized in countless songs and several films and documentaries, including Dead Man Walking and The Wildest Show in the South: The Angola Prison Rodeo. The latter film is based on the prison's biannual rodeo in April and October, which offers visitors a rare look inside the grounds of the prison. Inmates set up stands where they sell their arts and crafts during the rodeo. A small, year-round museum outside the prison's front gate houses a fascinating, eerie, and often moving collection of photographs documenting the people and events that have been a part of Angola. Items such as makeshift prisoner weapons and the electric chair used for executions until 1991 are also on display.

John James Audubon did a major portion of his Birds of America studies in this 100-acre park, and the three-story Oakley Plantation House is where Audubon tutored the young Eliza Pirrie, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Pirrie, who owned the house. The simple—even spartan—interior contrasts sharply with the extravagances of many of the River Road plantations and demonstrates the Puritan influence in this region. The grounds, too, recall the English penchant for a blending of order and wilderness in their gardens. You must follow a short, peaceful walking path to reach the house from the parking lot. A state-run museum at the start of the path provides an informative look at plantation life as it was lived in this region 200 years ago. A permanent exhibit tells the story of the slaves who lived on this site—including many of their names—and the grounds include a pair of authentic slave cabins brought here from another plantation.

The opulent, beautifully restored house at Rosedown dates from 1835. The original owners, Martha and Daniel Turnbull, spent their honeymoon in Europe; Mrs. Turnbull fell in love with the gardens she saw there and had the land at Rosedown laid out even as the house was under construction. She spent the rest of her life lovingly maintaining some 28 acres of exquisite formal gardens. The State of Louisiana owns Rosedown, and the beauty of the restored manor, including the furniture (90% of which is original), can be appreciated on an hour-long tour led by park rangers that—while thorough in some respects—mostly glosses over the lives of the slaves who lived on the property. Be sure to allow ample time for roaming the grounds after the tour.