In the pre-Civil War South, River Road between New Orleans and Baton Rouge was home to hundreds of sizeable plantations. Visitors can now tour Laura Plantation and Oak Alley Plantation, both located along the Mississippi River in Vacherie, Louisiana.

A full understanding of American history is incomplete without understanding the past and future impact of slavery in the United States. We believe nothing triggers the horrible images of slavery in the Southern U.S. more than the Southern plantation.

Today, each plantation destination provides a stark contrast between the beauty and magnificence of the primary homes, with the limited human value placed on the enslaved people that plantation owners viewed only as property.

Visits to Laura and Oak Alley Louisiana Plantations are a valuable way of learn more about the occupants of these plantations before/after the Civil War and eventual Emancipation.

As visitors, you will tour the buildings and view artifacts; read and learn details regarding the treatment of enslaved people; and listen to onsite experts speak to the daily lives of slave owners and enslaved people. Obviously, the subject matter can be difficult and quite heavy, but we learned an incredible amount from each of these stops.

The two plantations are located just three short miles apart in Vacherie, Louisiana. In the 1800s, there were hundreds of plantations on both sides of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, along what is known as River Road.

Vacherie is located an approximate one-hour drive west of downtown New Orleans and a similar one-hour drive time from Louisiana’s capital city of Baton Rouge. Most travelers likely arrive in Vacherie by vehicle from New Orleans. If you’re staying in New Orleans, we recommend Marriott’s Q&C Hotel, which is convenient to the French Quarter, museums, and Uptown/Garden District areas.

If not driving your own personal vehicle, you should arrange advance transportation to (and return from) Vacherie. This is a very rural area with no local taxis/rideshare services. You can easily rent a car at the New Orleans airport for your day-trip, and the airport is only a 45-minute drive from Vacherie. Alternatively, if you don’t have your own transportation and prefer not to rent a car, there are bundled transportation and tour options to both plantations available through Viator.

Visitors can also reach Vacherie by driving under five hours from Houston and less than six hours from Memphis and Birmingham. Dallas and Atlanta are each around 7 hours drive from Vacherie.

Southwest Airlines is the major airline serving New Orleans Louis Armstrong International Airport. Still, the airport has an abundance of direct flights throughout the U.S. from all major domestic airlines, while also offering several direct international destinations. While most arrive in New Orleans by airplane, the city also has a major cruise ship port.

The busiest times at the Oak Alley and Laura plantations correspond with tourism increases in New Orleans. The February through May months typically have heavier crowds in New Orleans due to favorable temperatures, Spring Break vacation schedules, and the presence of the city’s two largest festivals, Mardi Gras and the Jazz and Heritage Festival.

The city of New Orleans has a meaningful reliance on tourism, so large conventions, cruise ship landings, and more significant festivals will drive up foot traffic locally, corresponding with higher prices and reduced availability.

The extended summer period in south Louisiana can be hot and humid, while the period from October through April provides more favorable, milder weather conditions. Louisiana’s prime hurricane season occurs in the months of August, September, and October. Both properties are closed on several major national holidays, as well as during Mardi Gras.

Travelers visiting schedules at Laura Plantation and Oak Alley Plantation are each structured differently. With Laura, visitors select a guided tour time beginning between 10 am and 3:20 pm daily. Only a very small portion of your visit here will be self-guided.

Oak Alley operates differently, as only the 30-minute Big House tour is formally guided, and this can be reserved from 9 am until 4:30 pm each day. The larger duration of your visit to Oak Alley is self-guided around the property.

We understand that for many people, deciding whether or not to visit plantations can be a complex decision. While that choice is a ultimately a personal one, we would encourage you to read the rest of this article. Each location openly confronts its own history, as well as providing perspective on America’s overall slavery history.

For younger children, the subject matter at both plantations might be overly intense and shocking, so we encourage you to provide the appropriate explanations beforehand. We believe tweens/teens will gain significant educational value from visiting these locations. In all cases, it will be important for you to have difficult conversations about U.S. history with your children before, during, and after visiting these locations.

For seniors, the walking requirements are relatively limited and reasonably paced, although there are more significant stairs leading up to Oak Alley’s 2^nd floor within the Big House.

Children under 17 receive substantial price discounts on tickets at both plantations. Seniors receive modest price reductions when visiting Oak Alley.

Many travelers will weigh the ethics of visiting southern plantations. This is a question for the individual/families, and only you can judge the appropriateness. That said, we conducted a fair amount of online research before visiting and felt comfortable this would be a productive educational trip.

We went into these tours knowing that a part of the visit would concentrate on the magnificent homes and grounds, particularly at Oak Alley. During these two Louisiana plantation tours, the enslavers were not assigned any credibility for the beauty of the homes. 100% of the credit was given to the enslaved people who actually built the homes.

With that said, understanding slavery is seeing the entire picture, even from the people who tried to hide the ugliness they were practicing daily. This is a part of American history, and we encourage you to spend 5-7 hours away from their time in New Orleans to visit Laura Plantation and Oak Alley Plantation.

Originally known as the Duparc Plantation, the slave-built Laura Plantation was completed in 1805. The property owner Guillaume Duparc, great-grandfather to Laura Locoul Gore, died only three years after the main house’s completion. Duparc’s wife continued to run the property from 1808 through 1829. Afterward, her children took over the plantation, including Laura’s grandmother Elisabeth, who would run the property for 47 years. Essentially, the plantation was managed by women from 1808 to the 1870s.

Laura’s father, Emile, would eventually name the property after his daughter, Laura, born in 1861, shortly after the beginning of the Civil War. In fact, during your property tour, you will see a silver plate displayed. Laura’s mother wrapped her newborn daughter in sheets and carried her on top of this silver plate as they evacuated when Union ships approached. Four separate cannonballs hit the plantation’s Big House during the Union advance. Laura was only a toddler when the slaves were officially “freed.”

From Laura’s birth in 1861 to her 1891 marriage (after which she would move to St. Louis, Missouri), Laura would split her time between the plantation and a home in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Much of the history of plantation life at Laura Plantation was captured in the handwritten memories recorded by Laura over an approximately 70-year period and rediscovered again in 1993. Laura’s writings have been compiled in a published book, Memories of the Old Plantation Home: A Creole Family Album, available for purchase at the plantation gift shop and leading booksellers.

The list below highlights insights from the Louisiana plantation tour or from Laura’s book. While they may be shocking and horrifying today, they nevertheless provide an honest perspective regarding life on the plantation.

• Slaves as inventory – The property’s first slave registry was inventoried upon Duparc’s death in 1808 to establish the appropriate value of his “property.”

• Born into slavery – In 1830, Elisabeth purchased 30 teenage slaves to have them impregnated to generate a larger future slave population of workers at the plantation.

• Nearly 200 slaves – At the beginning of the Civil War, the plantation had 186 slaves.

• Relative kindness to slaves was mocked – Laura recalled her grandmother, Elisabeth, calling her parents “negro spoilers” for their proportionately kind treatment of the workers.

• Branding – Laura wrote about one of the slaves, Philippe, whose forehead had been branded.

Among the 300+ plantations built along River Road, relatively few were built in the Creole, French colonial style. Louisiana Creole was a mixture of cultures: Native American, French, Creole, Spanish, Cajun, and the Roman Catholic faith. The French language was considered the centerpiece of this culture.

During the Laura Plantation tour, the guide makes multiple stops throughout the property, visiting all of the rooms within the Big House. The home is uniquely built significantly above ground on brick columns and an 8-foot deep foundation. In the large house, you will walk into the raised basement and see the men’s and women’s parlors, service rooms, and common areas.

Enslaved people completed construction of the Big House in just 11 months. Certainly, an interesting perspective, as that’s roughly how long it takes to complete a home’s construction today, despite significant technological advancements during the past 200 years.

Behind the house, you will view three gardens and additional buildings, including barns and a retirement home for family members not living in the Big House. And you will see the four remaining original slave cabins (estimated to have been built in the 1840s-1850s) still standing today. Back in the 1800s, there were as many as 65 slave cabins onsite to house the 186 slaves. People actually lived in those remaining slave quarters up until the year 1977.

In 2017, the plantation introduced a permanent exhibit re-telling the story of the slave community who lived and worked on the property, called “From the Big House to Quarters: Slavery on Laura Plantation.” Key topics include religion, health, work roles, and the interrelationships between the enslaved people and the slave owners. Its final exhibit tells the life stories of specific individual slaves who lived on the Plantation

Tickets to visit the Laura Plantation should be purchased in advance. Most of your visit will center on a 75-minute guided Louisiana plantation tour of the Big House, gardens, and slave quarters. Tours in English begin every 40 minutes, with the first tour at 10 am and the day’s final tour at 3:20 pm.

After the tour, you can visit the slave museum and the property gift shop on a self-guided basis. Responding to its French heritage, there are also three daily guided tours offered in French. Adult admission is $28/person, while teens and younger children receive meaningful discounts.

Remember that Laura Plantation is located in a small community, a one-hour drive from New Orleans. Before coming out to Vacherie, Louisiana, you should ensure return transportation in advance because taxis/rideshare services are unavailable. Viator offers multiple tour options including round-trip transportation for visitors traveling from New Orleans, including visits to one or both of these plantations.

Jacques Roman and his wife Celina acquired Oak Alley Plantation in 1836 and soon began having the “Big House” built. The Greek Revival home would take three years to complete, finishing in 1839. It was built entirely by slave labor. Jacques passed away from tuberculosis in 1848, and his wife ran the property for eleven years following his death.

During Jacques’ life, he only freed one slave, a man named Zephyr. Despite his freedom, he remained on the plantation for an additional ten years to earn the $350 needed to buy his wife’s freedom. And the couple remained on the property afterward because Jacques owned their children. According to records, a field hand named Zephyr still lived on the property at 100 years old.

In 1859, Jacques and Celina’s son took over ownership of the plantation. He would briefly fight in the Confederate army during the War’s beginning, but made it back to the plantation when New Orleans fell to the Union army in 1862.

After the Civil War’s completion, formerly enslaved people continued working at Oak Alley as paid laborers. These formerly enslaved people were often compensated with credits that they could only utilize at the plantation’s store.

The slave population at Oak Alley Plantation averaged 110-120 people and were classified as either field slaves or house slaves; nearly 20 slaves worked in the Big House. Enslaved people’s names were recognized in their purchased papers as “inventory” as if they were the property of the plantation owner. Each slave was assigned a dollar value based on age, skills, and other factors.

A large number of plantations constructed in the early-mid 1800s were built in the Greek Revival style, similar to Oak Alley Plantation, involving two-story mansions with columns or pillars that extend from the ground to the roofline. The Big House’s most stunning exterior feature is the columns surrounding the entire square-shaped house, creating a covered gallery on both the ground-floor and second-floor porch areas.

The bricks used in making the Big House were made on the property, while other vital materials (roofing slate, glass, marble, etc.) arrived by vessel traveling on the nearby Mississippi.

The slave quarters area was a set of twenty structures housing the enslaved people. Every building was subdivided in half, wherein each side was intended for a family of 2-5 people. Oak Alley has re-constructed six structures for public viewing today. Placards and other literature in the buildings highlight the individuals who lived on the property in the 1800s.

You can also see tools on display that were used in farming, as well as the various shackles and canes used to punish them. Oak Alley Plantation staff can be found throughout the day at the slave quarters, and special talks related to the enslaved people’s daily lives are also part of the daily schedule.

Oak Alley’s name originates from the two rows of live oak trees in front of the Big House leading towards the Mississippi River. There are 28 trees, matching the number of columns in the Big House. It was the slaves who first planted these trees, and they were also charged with relocating these mature trees to form the picturesque alley of live oaks leading to the house.

In addition to the alley, the Big House is flanked on each side by the East and West gardens. As you look at the house’s beauty, the gardens, and the alley, never forget that those responsible for building the house and planting/relocating the trees were the enslaved people of Oak Alley Plantation.

We encourage you to purchase advance tickets online before arriving at Oak Alley Plantation. The overall property is open daily from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm, with Big House tour options from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm. Each guided tour of the main house lasts ~30 minutes.

Tickets can be purchased as one of two options: “With” or “Without the Big House tour”. Full-price adult tickets are just under $28, with the cost reduced by $2-3, if you opt out of touring the Big House. Seniors receive modest ticket discounts, while children receive a more substantial price reduction. When you book your admission ticket, you will reserve a specific entry time. This time corresponds to your guided Louisiana plantation tour of the property’s “Big House.”

Except for the “Big House,” the remainder of the property is self-guided, and you can explore without time constraints. We encourage you to begin your visit at the Sugarcane Theatre, which has a wide variety of information on the property, history, and daily lives of the people on the plantation. We would also encourage you to inquire at the park entrance about the special “Conversation Series” talks by staff throughout the day, particularly those featured at the Slavery Exhibit. Typically, there are 3-4 presentations daily at the Slavery Exhibit.

With both plantations, it is vital to ensure that you have return transportation to New Orleans following your visit. There is limited-to-no access to taxis/rideshare services in this part of rural Louisiana. There are multiple Louisiana plantation tour options on Viator including transportation for those traveling from New Orleans.

Historical information suggests that the first enslaved people in the United States appeared in the early 1600s, and demand for slaves increased steadily for the next 200+ years leading up to the Civil War and emancipation. For two centuries, pre-U.S. states, the Federal government, slave states, free states, and individual states passed various laws either promoting slavery or limiting slavery depending on the diverse needs and preferences of their constituencies.

One critical early set of laws called the Virginia Slave Codes was passed by Virginia’s legislature in 1705. This law permitted slave trading, encouraged racial segregation, and limited enslaved people’s rights. While the practice had technically occurred for 75+ years prior, this was one of the earliest enacted laws to formally legalize and provide supportive language to the practice of slavery.

After its Revolutionary War victory, the United States was founded in 1776. However, a significant division in slavery views immediately developed between northern and southern states, resulting in certain compromises, but also divergent state laws.

Key Federal-level compromises included the following:

• The Three-Fifths Compromise (1787), which counted a slave as three-fifths of a free person towards a state’s population count (important for U.S. House of Representatives seats).

• The Missouri Compromise (1820), which admitted Maine (a free state) and Missouri (a slave state) into the United States. This kept the U.S. states in balance.

Southern states grew tobacco, cotton, and sugar cane throughout the 1700s and 1800s. In 1794, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a machine that provided significant labor hours savings related to cotton processing (i.e.-removal of the seeds from the fiber). These efficiency gains spearheaded a dramatic increase in production, which required significantly more workers in the fields to pick cotton. The primary source of labor in the South was slaves.

Large Louisiana plantations were essentially factories focused on their all-important cash crop, and enslaved people were deemed necessary to produce those crops at the cheapest economic cost for plantation owners.

Just as demand for slave labor began to increase rapidly, the United States passed a law in 1808 that made it illegal to import slaves from other countries. The transatlantic slave trade slowed significantly, although there remained selective illegal trade.

However, the law did nothing to outlaw slavery itself, so interstate slave trading significantly increased, and pregnancies were encouraged to have children born into slavery to increase a plantation’s workforce organically.

Even without importing slaves legally, the slave population in southern states jumped from 1.2 million in the 1810 U.S. Census to 4.0 million by 1860 (and some believe that the slave population may have been 2-3x larger than the official counts)!

The slavery issue became a powder keg for the United States beginning in the mid-1850s when the northern states formed the Republican political party to abolish slavery. When Abraham Lincoln of the Republican Party was elected U.S. President in 1860, the southern states quickly seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy, and the Civil War began shortly after that.

In 1863, President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, which moved to free the enslaved people, but this had minimal initial impact as the Civil War raged on. However, when the War ended in victory for the Northern states (April 1865), slaves were freed in both Northern and Southern states. The U.S. now formally celebrates the Juneteenth holiday to commemorate the furthest portion of Texas, hearing that all slaves were now legally free (June 19, 1865).

As was emphasized during our tours of these Louisiana plantations, the official end to slavery did not necessarily change the former slaves’ condition. State and local governments across the southern part of the country passed what was known as Black Codes and Jim Crow laws which moved to restrict the African American labor force and enact significant segregation policies, laws that were eerily similar to slavery itself.

The practice of sharecropping also rapidly gained popularity. Sharecropping was a program where formerly enslaved people received land (or shares of land), equipment, and supplies from their former slave owners. In return, they paid the owners through a share of revenues that were typically highly disadvantageous for the former slaves.