E.D. White Historic Site

Cypress cut in 1825 holds up a house that raised a governor and a Chief Justice. Edward Douglas White Sr. lived here when he held Louisiana's governorship in the 1830s. His son, Edward Douglas White Jr., became the only Louisiana native ever appointed Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from 1910 to 1921. The structure started as Creole plantation style — cypress frame, galleries facing Bayou Lafourche — and later took Greek Revival modifications. What stands now belongs to the Louisiana State Museum, which runs exhibits on the Chitimacha people who shaped this coast first, the Acadian settlers who followed, the enslaved people who worked the cane fields, and the plantation system that organized it all. The house sits three miles north of Thibodaux on the bayou. Admission is free. You go because two centuries of Louisiana power passed through these rooms, and because the museum chose not to tell only the victor's half of the story.