Audubon Country

The studio at Oakley House where Audubon worked. He came in 1821 to teach drawing to the planter's teenage daughter. The arrangement paid sixty dollars a month and left every afternoon free. He stayed four months and painted thirty-two of the Birds of America plates here — more than he completed anywhere else in a single stretch. The house was built in 1808. It sits on the bluff country east of the Mississippi where the loess ridges roll back into hardwood forest. The Audubon State Historic Site preserves it. Fifteen miles south in Jackson, the Greek Revival college building from 1825 stands intact at Centenary State Historic Site. Centenary College operated here before relocating to Shreveport in 1908. During the Civil War, the campus became a Confederate hospital. The Mississippi bends through Pointe Coupee Parish past St. Francis Chapel, one of the oldest Catholic parish sites in Louisiana. French settlers established the community in the early 1700s. In New Roads, a marker identifies the site of Julien Poydras's house. Poydras arrived in Louisiana as an indentured servant and became Pointe Coupee's wealthiest man. His will enacted the largest private emancipation in Louisiana history. He also served in Congress and endowed schools. This is bluff country the Civil War largely spared. The loess ridges are still dry and elevated where they rise above the river. The sites that Audubon knew, that the Republic of West Florida claimed for seventy-four days in 1810, that saw classroom work and treated the war's wounded — they're still standing. The history is readable on the ground.