Pointe Coupee's historic sites and the working businesses among them

Pointe Coupee Parish has 33 properties on the National Register of Historic Places, including one National Historic Landmark, according to a list compiled from the National Park Service’s records. The list includes plantation houses, churches, a courthouse, a bank and downtown buildings in New Roads. A few of the sites are still tied to working businesses, and the parish’s visitor trade came to $31.0 million in direct spending in 2025, by the state’s count.

A Creole house that is also a museum

The Pointe Coupee Parish Museum stands on the west bank of False River, near Parlange. Its nomination says the original part of the house dates from the early nineteenth century, with a typical Creole plan: two rooms, front and rear galleries and a single central chimney. What sets it apart is the construction. The walls are horizontal logs with full dovetail corners, with almost no gap between them. The Park Service called it probably a unique example of log construction in a Creole house, and the only example of that notched-log method known in the United States. An addition made before 1840 brought the house to three rooms. The Register listed it in 1980, when the Pointe Coupee Parish Police Jury owned it. The parish tourism office now gives its hours as daily from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and by appointment.

In New Roads, the Julien Poydras Museum and Arts Center occupies the former Poydras High School, built in 1924 and listed on the Register in 1996. Its 200-seat auditorium hosts events, and its upper floor houses the Pointe Coupee Historical Society and the parish tourism office. The Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation honored the society in 2011 for saving the school from demolition.

Downtown New Roads is itself a historic asset. In March 2024 the Park Service listed the New Roads Commercial Historic District.

Working businesses with long roots

Alma Plantation at Lakeland was established by Julien Poydras. An undated Library of Congress survey record says the Stewart family has owned it since 1959 and that the mill’s grinding capacity is about 6,000 tons of cane every 24 hours. A 2022 WAFB report said Alma farms 2,500 acres of sugarcane, processes about 70,000 tons of cane a season and sells raw sugar at its general store in Lakeland. It also said the mill is closed to public tours. Across the parish, the USDA counted 58,173 acres of sugarcane in 2022.

The H.J. Bergeron Pecan Shelling Plant on False River in New Roads traces its history to Horace Joseph Bergeron, who opened a country store along the lake in 1909. His sons built the shelling plant in 1941, according to the company, and a third generation now runs it. The company says it processes five to seven million pounds of in-shell pecans a year, bought from growers in the region. WAFB reported in 2019 that the plant handles nearly 7 million pounds a year. In the 2022 Census of Agriculture, Pointe Coupee Parish ranked fifth among Louisiana parishes for sales of fruits, tree nuts and berries, at $1.04 million.

How heritage feeds trade

State tourism tables for 2025 show $31.0 million in direct visitor spending in the parish, including $10.0 million on food and beverage and $4.6 million on retail. They also show 112 direct jobs, and 164 when indirect and induced jobs are counted. The tables do not split spending by site, so no figure can be tied to any one house, museum or mill. What they do show is a small visitor economy next to the farm sector. Historic sites are among the attractions the parish tourism office promotes.