By Gordon Hutchinson

Depending on which legend you choose to believe, Bayou Sara was named for an old woman who lived at its mouth and washed her clothes in its waters, or for either an English settler woman or Indian woman who were said to reside at the mouth of the bayou and entertain riverboatmen engaged in the active Mississippi River commerce of the 18th century. 

Lean towards the second two...early French maps listed the name of the bayou as "Baiouc a la Chaudepisse" or Bayou Gonorrhea. At least its Americanized version didn't stick--"Clap Bayou"--to the everlasting relief of the settlers and their descendants who resided, and live today, "up the hill" in the village of St. Francisville.

Thank the Mississippi River. Its legendary flood of 1927 wiped out the thriving community of Bayou Sara the final time. Originally a stopping point for basic needs, the convergence of the bayou and the Mississippi River grew in 1850 to become the largest river port between New Orleans and Memphis. And small wonder; with the rich plantation country expanding just above the river's always threatening flood plain, the community of Bayou Sara offered a shipping point for the plantation products of cotton and other staples.

Shelled and burned by Union troops during the Civil War, Bayou Sara also survived several devastating fires, only to come back to fill the needs of commerce. One fire in the 1850s destroyed 50 buildings--almost the complete community. But the boll weevil and the railroads wiped out cotton and the river commerce, and when the River claimed its lands again in 1927, as it does every few years, it was too much and the town was not rebuilt when the floodwaters subsided.

Today, stand at the site of the original town, and you stand overlooking the ferry landing for the town of St. Francisville, where a state car ferry operates all day and part of the night carrying cars and passengers across the half-mile muddy expanse of the Mississippi River. It is the only available method of river crossing for the entire stretch of river between Baton Rouge and Natchez.

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This ferry landing is a good place to start your journey through the two parishes of Louisiana known as "The Felicianas." The East and West versions are similar and interrelated, and literally mean "Happyland." 

John James Audubon chose to take residence as a tutor at West Feliciana's Oakley Plantation, where he would live and paint 80 of his famous studies of the "Birds of America." Little wonder the name Audubon figures so prominently in so many ways around the community of St. Francisville.

Traveling several miles upward into a steep, hilly terrain, you'll enter the original village of St. Francisville. This small, Victorian town, originally settled around a Capuchin monk cemetery in the 1700s, has maintained its historical significance through the efforts of its citizenry and the West Feliciana Historical Society, which operates a museum on the main street leading up from the river. It is well worth a visit to get a better understanding of the towns of Bayou Sara and St. Francisville.

Drive or walk the old village streets, and one is struck with the wonders of a seeming timelessness. In an area steeped in recollections of earlier, richer times, St. Francisville literally seeps age from its moss and fungus-coated bricks. The entire village district, in fact, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its ornate wooden cottages, comfortable salt-box homes and columned mansions are bordered by a cupola-topped town hall and Grace Episcopal Church, both outstanding examples of 19th century architecture that survived Yankee desecrations in the War of Northern Invasion. And don't miss the cemetery...the mausoleums and headstones are worth the trip, alone.

But St. Francisville is only the cultural center of two parishes that offer so much more to the traveler looking for pastoral scenery and rich history. Travel north on US 61 and view the rolling countryside that so reminded its English settlers of their homeland, who availed themselves of the land grants given by the Spanish government to encourage settlement of the area. And marvel at the number of antebellum mansions whose oak-lined drives invite the visitor off the pavement to an earlier, more genteel, honorable time. 

It has been stated that in the period before the Civil War, two-thirds of the millionaires in America lived along the Great River Road from New Orleans to Natchez. Viewing the number of antebellum homes in the St. Francisville area, it would seem half of those people must have lived in West Feliciana.

Traveling a few miles north of the town, one comes to the junction with US 66...the Angola highway. Angola is the main prison of the state's penal system, and is located twenty miles north of this junction at the end of US 66. The prison is named for the former plantation whose grounds it occupies, and the plantation was so-named because a large portion of its slaves came from that African country. 

Located in a huge bend of the Mississippi River, Angola is a working penitentiary: still a farming colony, only now, instead of slaves, the prisoners work the fields to earn their keep for the state. Just outside the gates of the prison, and open to the public, is the Angola Prison Museum, an interesting, colorful collection of history, garb, and seized weapons from prisoners over the years. Phone (225) 655-2592 for information.

But before you reach the end of the road, you must take a side trip. Look for the road sign about twelve miles up directing a right turn to Pincknyville, Mississippi. It is here you must turn to experience the land and feeling of remote countryside that is the Tunica Hills...a rugged, mountainous-like terrain that begins in West Feliciana on its western edge, and follows the Mississippi River northward into Mississippi. 

Much of the area in the western portion of West Feliciana describes itself with the name of "Tunica," a warlike tribe that overran the peaceful Houmas who were the original settlers. As in life, the victor gains the spoils, and it was the Tunicas for which everything is named. Perhaps it is the terrain that is most aptly named, because like the Indians, it is rugged and aggressive, with vast scars of erosion leaving ravines and veritable canyons of untillable acreage, good not even for timber in many areas as the land is too rough to get the trees out of it.

It is into a microcosm of this area you are heading with a seven-mile side trip to the Pond Mississippi Store and the Clark Creek Natural Area hiking trail.

Down a steep hill and rounding a curve, you break out into a landscape of green, rolling hillside with a pond at the bottom, surrounded by donkeys of all colors and descriptions, and a flock of geese that seems to spend more time in the road than on the waters of the pond. 

Standing alone, overlooking it all, is the white board Pond Store, rebuilt in 1881 after a fire and still in operation. It is here that you can visit, stock up on water, soft drinks and snacks for your hike, and look out from the porch of the store over the small herd of burros grazing around the pond. One is colored like a pinto horse, which gives the owners great pleasure in asking you to look at their "spotted ass."

The store is a plethora of antiques, farm utensils, and mounted deer heads that must stretch back to the turn of the century; at its rear is a separated segment with a wooden half-wall that is the still-in-operation US Post Office. The owners of the store have built two quaint, one-room log cabins that overlook the pond and are available for nightly rentals. In what has to be one of the world's great anomalies, the store's cooler offers designer bottled water. The trappings of civilization intrude, even here. Phone (601) 888-4426.

Just 300 yards up the road above the store is the parking lot and head of the trail of the Clark Creek Natural Area, preserved by the State of Mississippi (yes, you entered Mississippi three miles back up the road) as an example of the unusual Tunica Hills terrain.

Be advised that the first mile of trail is relatively easy walking and is cindered and graveled to some degree. On steep areas where the trail has washed away, or becomes too steep for safe walking, wooden stairs have been built to get the hikers down to the next fairly level ground. But your objective is to follow the path to see the some 50 waterfalls that abound in this incredible forest, and the array of birds, wildlife and flowers so abundant in this rough setting that one is reminded of nothing so much as Appalachian mountain trails. 

Before you reach the first waterfall, the easy walking ends and warning signs are posted that you are entering a primitive area, on a primitive trail. Hikers should be in good physical condition, have on safe, sensible shoes, and carry water. The hike gets steep, fast.

Approximately one-half mile more, and you reach the first of the waterfalls. A stairwell has been thoughtfully provided by the state to allow you into the ravine into which the cold, clear, mountain-like water tumbles; it is possible to climb down into the clay and rock bottom and stand under the waterfall as it splashes down into a boulder-strewn pool.

From here you can hike on through another four miles of ravines, crevasses and the wild, explicit beauty that so captured the imagination of John James Audubon. But again, heed the signs warning hikers to be properly outfitted and in good physical condition. The Tunica Hills may not be mountains, but anyone who has ever hiked them will quickly tell you they are mountainous terrain.

A different setting and new experiences await you a second day as you take another side trip from St. Francisville. Head due east on State Highway 10, which traverses the entire Florida Parishes, paralleling the Mississippi/Louisiana border beginning at the Mississippi River's ferry landing, and ending on the eastern border of the state again with Mississippi.

Fifteen miles eastward on Highway 10 brings you to the town of Jackson, Louisiana, which is named for President Andrew Jackson, who marched through the area with his army en route to do battle with the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1814. "Old Hickory" camped on the banks of Thompson's Creek that flows on the western border of the town, and forever left his legacy there.

Jackson is another old, historical town formed early in the 19th century, right after the Louisiana Purchase (which occurred in 1803.)

Unlike St. Francisville, which is on a fairly well-traveled US highway, and has developed a commercial area in addition to its historical portion, Jackson's historical area "is" its commercial/retail area, and many of the businesses operate in stores built over 150 years ago.

Located in the northern portion of town is the original campus of Centenary College (now in Shreveport) whose students enlisted en masse in the Confederate army, leaving the school closed until after the war. The campus now houses a town museum and town offices. 

Next to the college is the Old Hickory Village, a turn-of-the-century recreation of the town, its cotton gin and an operating narrow-gauge railway that pulls rail cars on a tour of the old portion of town. Just outside of town, on its eastern border, a skirmish between Confederate cavalry and Union troops was fought in conjunction with the siege of Port Hudson, the last Confederate Stronghold on the Mississippi River. Known as the Battle of Jackson's Crossroads, it is brought to life each spring by blue and gray re-enactors. 

Jackson, like St. Francisville, is steeped in history and proud of its contributions to the growth of the Florida parishes. And perhaps here is as good a place as any to describe what these folks are referring to when they speak of the "Florida Parishes."

When the United States bought the territory from France known as the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the purchase did not include that portion of Louisiana on the eastern side of the Mississippi River. That portion of the state was known as Spanish West Florida and was ruled by Spain, who owned all the land east of the Mississippi River to present-day Florida.

Naturally, the English-descended settlers of this area felt more kinship with the United States than Florida-based Spanish governors, and wished to be annexed into the United States. But with ongoing problems with England that would result in the War of 1812, the young republic could not afford to offend another European power on their very doorstep, so a deaf ear was turned to the pleadings of the settlers to be included in the lands of the Purchase.

In 1810, the settlers acted, revolting and overthrowing the Spanish government and forming the Republic of West Florida, with its capital in St. Francisville. The Republic flew its own flag for only 74-odd days, just until it could formally request annexation into the United States. Since it was a formed and official government, the United States marched a contingent into St. Francisville and officially annexed the young republic, thus ending one of the shorter self-governed countries in history. At the ceremonies, it is said the flag of the republic was hauled down and buried at the intersection of the two main streets of what is now the historical district of St. Francisville, less than a block from the present day courthouse.

End your day in Jackson, and your two-day tour of Tunica and the Felicianas, with a visit to Feliciana Cellars, a winery and vineyard located on Hwy. 10 in the center of town and built on the site of the old railroad depot. Tours of the winery are offered, as is wine tasting. The grapes are locally grown, native plants--one more example of the agricultural wealth of the area that drew so many settlers in earlier centuries.

History, in the form of architecture and landscaping going back to the early days of this country as a republic, and great beauty, in the form of rolling pastoral views and rugged, aggressive hills and hollows make up the many aspects of the lands of Tunica Indians and English settlers. I can think of few areas where so much of such diversity can be seen in such a close area...and such are the attractions of East and West Feliciana, Louisiana.

All Photos by Gordon Hutchinson
Copyright © 2000 by Gordon Hutchinson.  All rights reserved.