Laurel Valley Sugar Plantation

About this property

Laurel Valley Sugar Plantation is located in Thibodaux, Louisiana. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The plantation was originally owned by a French Acadian named Etienne Boudreaux. He was one of thousands of petit habitants who made their way to southern Louisiana after being expelled from Nova Scotia. Boudreaux bought a Spanish land grant about two miles south of Thibodaux along Bayou Lafourche in 1785. Not much is known about the Boudreaux family, but the 1810 census lists 13 people living at the residence, nine males and four females. The Boudreaux family home, built in 1816, is the oldest surviving structure on property. The property that came to be known as Laurel Valley Plantation was sold to Joseph W. Tucker in 1832. Tucker was a Virginian who bought about 5,000 acres of land along Bayou Lafourche. It was at one time the largest producer of sugar in Lafourche Parish, and a mill was built on the property for this purpose. As many as 135 slaves lived and worked on the property prior to the Civil War. While the main house built by Tucker was burned by Union soldiers during the Civil War, shotgun houses (built circa 1895) and Creole cabins (built circa 1845) remain on the property. The mill stopped production in 1926, and sustained significant damage during Hurricane Betsy in 1965. In 2021, the plantation sustained extensive damage during Hurricane Ida and lost more than a dozen of the original buildings. However, Laurel Valley was able to reopen again a month later and currently offers guided tours of the property. With about 40 original structures remaining, it is the largest surviving 19th- and 20th-century sugar plantation complex left in the United States, and it is still a working sugarcane farm. The general store on the property is open to the public, displaying tools and farm implements used in the cultivation of sugar cane as well as locally made arts and crafts. The store was not originally at the plantation; it had to be moved there. Laurel Valley Plantation was added as a historic district to the National Register of Historic Places on March 24, 1978. Plantation House, 29°48′33″N 90°46′16″W, built c.1880. Servants' Quarters, 29°48′32″N 90°46′16″W, built c.1880. Several movies have been filmed at Laurel Valley, including Angel Heart, Crazy in Alabama, A Gathering of Old Men, Interview with the Vampire, A Lesson Before Dying, Double Exposure: The Story of Margaret Bourke-White, and Ray.The Depeche Mode Music Video "Freelove" was also filmed on the plantation. The history of the Laurel Valley Plantation was told in an episode of "Mysteries of the Abandoned" (S06E02).

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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