Elite City Tours 

PLANTATION HISTORY

In the mid-1800s, the highest concentration of millionaires in America could be found in one winding corridor only about 120 miles long—a strip in south Louisiana along the Mississippi River, from New Orleans north to the region near Baton Rouge.

The region’s wealth came from massive sugar cane plantations. While the rest of the South cultivated cotton, Louisiana grew sugar and used the Mississippi River as a frontier freeway to get the crop to New Orleans and markets abroad.

 

That history is preserved today through approximately 30 plantation mansions from the era, homes where the wealthy planters lived, conducted business and entertained peers and distinguished guests. Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the homes annually, each amazed by stunning architecture, elaborate furnishings and entertaining tales of life and livelihood in antebellum Louisiana

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Schedule your tour of these 3 great plantations:

 

OAK ALLEY PLANTATION

Located in Vacherie and connected to the Mississippi River by a 14-deep double-row of 300-year-old live oak trees.

 

LAURA PLANTATION 

Located in Vacherie, this plantation offers a tour based on 5,000 pages of French National Archives documents related to free and enslaved people who lived there.

 

WHITNEY PLANTATION

The Whitney Plantation Historic District is a museum devoted to slavery in the Southern United States. The district, including the main house and outbuildings, is preserved near Wallace, in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, on the River Road along the Mississippi River.

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