I’ve been lazy. I haven’t been keeping up with blog posts like I intend to. So this is about three months after I visited Oak Alley, but better late than never. Also it’s super old. Things don’t change that quickly. The grass has probably been cut, and that’s about it.
Oak Alley is just one of those places. It is absolutely stunning; so much so, it has become iconic. The grounds are an hour outside of New Orleans in Vacherie. Driving between NOLA and Vacherie gives you a good idea of what rural Louisiana looks like. What used to be a running plantation is now a museum with a restaurant and inn serving as a reminder of the American South’s unfortunate history.
I remember driving passed Oak Alley at fourteen. My family was visiting relatives after Katrina, and we spent a day driving around the countryside outside of New Orleans. It was dusk when we drove by stopping just outside the front gate. The house was lit up from the outside at the end of a path lined by ancient live oak trees. It was magnificent, and a vision I will never forget. It wasn’t until I was in New Orleans for a bachelorette party a few years ago that I actually toured the plantation. The house is beautiful, but the grounds are the truly wonderful aspect. The plantation earned its name from the twenty-eight live oaks lining a walkway up to the front door of the house. It features a guided tour of the “Big House,” a slavery exhibit, a sugar cane exhibit, and more. There is a restaurant and inn on the grounds. The restaurant has some seriously amazing bread pudding. The gift shop also has some amazing pralines. If you’re lucky, you can have some warm and fresh.
Some of the oak trees are almost three hundred years old. The larger branches extend and drop to the ground. The roots are knotty and huge. Spanish moss grows on the trees. When the light hits them just right, it’s what bayou dreams are made of. Movies and pictures will never do it justice.
Oak Alley was a sugar cane plantation built on the suffering of slaves. Sugar cane was known as white gold because of how much it was worth. Growing, harvesting, and refining was back breaking and dangerous. Slaves were bought and sold, so people could have their sugar. In those days, there was rich, then there was sugar cane rich. Oak Alley was the latter. The history goes back almost 200 years, but the live oak trees are even older than that. Walking the grounds is simultaneously enchanting and haunting. It’s difficult to think about how one place can be home to so much beauty and misery. All history is fraught with abuse, but it should never be overlooked. Remembering what really happened is an important part of embracing history.
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