Support for LA 64 is provided by office of the Lieutenant Governor, Billy Nungesser.

Keep Louisiana Beautiful and the Louisiana Office of Tourism.

In this episode of LA 64, hit the road with me to explore Bogart Parish.

We'll jam to bluegrass music, brave a haunted jail tour shop main streets.

Learn the secret to Louisiana's most famous watermelons.

Experience farm life and dry creek and end in Maryville, where the spirit of no man's land still lingers.

I'm Karen LeBlanc, a travel journalist and Louisiana native.

Join me on LA 64, a journey through all 64 parishes exploring Louisiana's less travel paths.

I'm driving on the back roads of Beauregard Parish along the Myths and Legends Byway, paved by the early settlers of no man's land right along with me as we discovered legends, law, and a few haunted places in these piney woods of southwest Louisiana.

Parish sits in southwestern Louisiana, tucked into the state's Piney Woods region near the Texas border.

We begin in DeRidder, the parish seat, then travel to Sugar Town on to Dry Creek and end our road trip in Maryville.

Let's go.

Saturday morning into Ritter and the Guard Museum is packed for the monthly bluegrass jam.

Fiddler Ron Yule leads the session welcoming anyone who wants to play along.

Banjos, mandolins, guitars and fiddles fall into rhythm, building that unmistakable bluegrass sound.

It's all acoustic driven, with tight harmonies and those high tenor vocals made famous by Bill Monroe, the man who gave the honor its name, inspired by his home state of Kentucky.

The Bluegrass State.

If you've ever been in love.

Why you don't.

Can't say why you're in love.

This person just fascinates you so much.

You have to do it, have to be around him, she said.

I give when I wake up in the morning because I live by myself, but I just the first thing I do is pick up the fiddle.

I can't explain it.

What struck me is how everybody just knows what to do.

I mean, there's no plan, there's no sheet music.

Somebody just calls out a song.

And how do you all know how to just play it?

I was playing by ear.

It's.

It's something some people have to learn.

I started out playing by ear.

I like that I can play that church, and I like to see people enjoying the sound.

This two time state champion fiddler is a regular at the Bluegrass Jam.

So for me, it's kind of a way of life.

You know, I wake up at two in the morning thanking them about a song.

We don't have as many festivals as we did before, but the jams really keep a lot of stuff going.

Do Raiders downtown is a designated Louisiana main Street community, and it sets the scene for everyday life.

Rooted in a past that dates back to its designation as a parish seat in 1912, I step into the Gothic jail and immediately feel the chilling contrast of elegant architecture that holds grim interiors.

Am I going to see a ghost today?

Well.

I'm not sure.

They don't really work on command, but we shall see.

In 1928, this became known as the Hanging Jail.

When two men, Joe Gena and Moulton Brasso, were executed for killing a taxi cab driver, they each hung from a noose at the top of this spiral staircase.

Well, as you head up the staircase, it leads up to the eight jail cells that were located on the second and third floors.

Now we have everything from a solitary confinement to general populations.

The Gothic jail was built in 1914 with three stories designed with cells stacked above the jailer's living quarters.

It closed in 1982, and today stands as both an architectural statement and as a paranormal tourist attraction.

The cell we're in now is actually the women's cell.

A lot of our paranormal visitors have come in the cell, and we get a lot of voices through EVP recordings and stuff like that.

We pass through a tunnel entrance, now sealed off, that once connected the jail to the courthouse next door.

It was used to move prisoners back and forth.

Next door, the Bogart Parish Courthouse rises in the same Gothic Revival style built in 1914.

Today, it stands as a symbol of civic pride, restored and expanded in the early 2000 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

It's the.

Image of our parish, and the citizens of this parish voted to restore this courthouse.

That's how important it is to them.

The old folks say that back at the turn of the century, when logging was prevalent and virtually every tree in Bogart Parish was cut.

They say that you could stand halfway between here and the Sabine River and see the courthouse dome.

This room was the only courtroom originally in the courthouse.

And when we did the renovation, we took out the suspended ceiling that was covering this beautiful stained glass that we see above us.

Across the street, I visit the lowest loft in Doll Museum, housed in the old post office, the visitor's welcome center.

The collection of more than 4000 dolls was a gift from Lois Loftin, a resident of Bogart Parish.

She grew up during the Great.

Depression era.

She loved dolls.

She and her sister shared a tin doll when they were little, and they played with it till it fell apart.

And her husband, they called him the Doll Doctor.

He would repair dolls if they needed to be repaired.

Bogart parish was once part of No Man's Land, the neutral strip from 1806 to 1821.

It was a lawless stretch of land between Spanish Texas and the United States, where settlers carved out lives without formal rule.

Today, the Bubble Guard Museum traces that untamed beginning and the people who called it home.

The no man's land mentality is still very much ingrained in the people here, and it's part of our heritage.

You know, it's part of our spirit, and I think it always will be.

I met up with the mayor of DeRidder for a stroll along a newly paved walking trail, passing a restored shotgun house once home to sawmill workers, now reimagined as a gathering space for the community, a modern amenity nearby invites electric car drivers to plug in and stay a while.

What can we do to get people to come to the river?

One thing that we did do is put two electric car charging stations right downtown, in the river between City Hall and our library, which allows people to charge their vehicles, shop at our restaurants, have this experience, and so they can see the community while their vehicle is being charged.

Next, I wonder, down Derrida's main street, where locally owned shops breathe new life into restored historic buildings, you can feel and see the entrepreneurial spirit of commerce and character everywhere.

My eye goes straight to the oversize horse perched atop hooks.

Big de corral, a landmark in its own right, open since 1972 and housed in a former movie theater.

We're not truly a Western store.

Okay, right.

We sell what our customers want, which is called a redneck fashion center.

That's a lot of people said this is a friendly family store.

And that really described us.

Yeah.

My father, no one walked that door that my father didn't didn't really greet.

And with love.

Who's the stylist here?

Because somebody is going to style me in this redneck fashion.

You got going on.

All right, well, let's let's do it.

All right.

We start from the boots up.

Should I do my boot strut?

Yes.

This is definitely me.

This is like Western living it.

Exactly right.

Exactly.

It's like it's western for anybody.

I pause for coffee at Cat's Coffee and Creamery, where I met up with Victoria Moore, the shop's manager and a proud advocate for Main Street Revival.

This is about a homey feel, about feeling at home and feeling welcomed every day.

And that's what the river represents.

If it wouldn't be for that, we wouldn't be here.

Local historian and Louisiana's longest serving councilman, Vincent Libuse, leads me on a walking tour through Derrida's past, guided by historic plaques.

We pause at the Payton's Pike plaque at the old ideal drugstore.

Or in the summer of 1941, General George S Patton tried to pull rank for a pipe while training troops during the Louisiana maneuvers, and the shopkeeper refused.

General Patton.

Cooks in.

Front of the land in Missouri, who is five foot seven, says, go to the back of the line.

General Patton says, do you know who I am?

Mr.

Ray says, yes, I do.

You're a general, but you're not a gentleman.

She shows in the pipe in a huff.

He takes and goes to the counter and paved and walks out of the building.

Has its own kind of treasure trail, a string of flea markets that invite you on a scavenger hunt.

One stop that stands out is Treasure City Market, owned by Matt Caudill and housed in what was once a sawmill commissary.

We were one of the few that were in town, but now Derrida's had quite a few more that have opened up.

So it's kind of becoming a destination for flea markets or people thrifting and shopping.

Do readers renewed entrepreneurial spirit is also calling people back home, including the owner of The Coffee Connection.

She returned from California, proving that big business can thrive in a small town.

Today, she's built a reputation as one of the region's top coffee roasters.

What is the secret to roasting great tasting coffee beans?

The secret I. Have found over the.

Years is knowing.

How to manipulate.

The.

The probe.

And the environmental probe and.

How to.

How to maneuver the damper.

To make.

Sure that.

The roasting.

Is right.

A perfect.

Roast.

Is about.

18 minutes, 19 minutes.

A tight knit Mennonite community took root around DeRidder in the 1930s, drawn by affordable land and a way of life grounded in faith, craftsmanship, and self-sufficiency.

Little Willow Mercantile is owned by Michaela Smith, who operates the store with her husband, selling handcrafted and homemade items.

We make all of the soap and a lot of the personal care products ourself, and we have a lot of talented local artisans that make like the pottery and some leather goods, the candles, the honey that all comes from the locals.

We were raised to work hard and.

With our hands.

When I travel, I look beyond the mainstream art scene for artists creating on their own terms.

That search led me to the backyard studio of Joey Governo, a retired sign painter who rescues discarded satellite dishes and transforms them from eyesores into art.

I like to take.

Things that.

Aren't ordinary.

To.

Paint on, and this has worked out really good because I like the shape and it's easy to prep and people buy them and they put them in their gardens and they're on their walls, in their studios, fences.

The idea came to him during a visit to a trailer park with discarded satellite dishes and a simple question, why not what others left behind?

Joey gathered up, transforming the salvaged relics of a not so distant past into bursts of color.

He paints using enamels, weather resistant pigments and teaches me his technique using a quill brush.

Color always attracted me, and because colors and emotion and plus there's movement in the satellite dishes.

Next I visit the War Memorial Civic Center.

America's first off base USO that opened in 1941 as a social center for the soldiers stationed at Fort Polk, and the airmen stationed at what is now Beauregard Regional Airport.

Today, it's a community gathering space and a World War II museum, free and open to the public.

The building was constructed in just 39 days back in 1941, specifically for use for an off base USO.

We are designated on the Register of Historic Places as the first off base USO in the United States of America.

So Miss Belmar Smith generously donated most of what you see because this building was built specifically for World War Two.

And so most of the items that you see in the building are World War II related.

And who was she?

She was a local historian who loved, I think she was a great World War II history buff.

From there, USO, I followed the legacy of World War II airmen to their former training base at the Bubble Guard Regional Airport, a working airport that is open for public tours of its original hangar, and it has exhibits.

When 1940.

One.

The.

Department of Defense, or Department of War had a lease agreement with Beauregard Parish Police Jury to lease 4200 acres and that would become DeRidder Army Air Base.

Construction started in early 1942, and they activated DeRidder Army Air Base in February.

Bogart parish is famous for its sugar town watermelons.

They're known for that perfect balance of sweetness and texture.

They're crispy and they're juicy.

And starting in June, folks come from all over here today and day.

Green farms to purchase watermelons straight from the ground.

Right now they're planting the watermelon.

So I'm going to send you up so you can see all the cultivation taking place.

And then we're going to meet the farmer.

It's the.

Sweetest watermelon you will ever put in your mouth.

Jason Greene has been farming watermelons for nearly three decades, and says the secret to Sugar town watermelons starts in the soil.

What makes our watermelons better than everyone else is from what what what we claim to be is our soul runs so deep we have about 12 to 15ft of sandy soil and that's a key.

And grow in watermelons.

Of course, what you put in the ground to help the watermelons grow makes a lot of difference.

I had Northeast to Dry Creek to meet Bogart, Parrish's best known storyteller, Louisiana author Kurt Iles.

We meet on the front porch of his family home.

Built in 1892.

He calls the homestead the center of his solar system, a feeling he's captured in verse.

This is the old house at the end of the road.

If it's possible to love a house like a person, then the Lord knows I love this old house.

It's a place reminded me of family and the things in life that really mean the most.

It's a place I return to when I'm lonely or it seems I've lost my way.

Kurt writes about what he knows.

The piney woods of southwest Louisiana, once known as No Man's land.

Out here, survival meant lean on your neighbors, where oral tradition is rooted in stories that travel the same way voices once did with daily hollers to check on your neighbors and storytelling each night around the family table.

We're big hearted people.

We've always cared about each other, helped each other out, worked hard.

This is a hard working area.

You didn't make it here, but working hard.

I life style here is always been tied to the timber and lumber and in fact, in Boulder Parish we have a say in money grows on trees.

Kurt is the seventh generation to steward this land, carefully restoring it by planting and managing longleaf pine, guiding it back to its original piney savanna.

This is a little young longleaf.

I think that Andre, after Andre the Giant, the finest wrestler.

I love Andre.

It's probably the smallest tree I have out here that's still alive.

I venture deeper into the Piney Woods to Dry Creek Baptist Camp, a place that feels like a frontier village from another era.

Which stands to reason, considering the camp has welcomed generations for more than a century.

In 1924, over a hundred years ago, there was a group of folks that just got together to say, you know, we think the best thing for our kids is that they have a chance to be able to get away from the busyness of life.

It was primarily the churches of Bogart Parish that started it.

So probably about 25 to 30 churches came together and started it, and it just kind of grew.

Dry Creek Baptist Camp stretches across 107 acres with log cabins, a tabernacle, country store, and all the classic memory making experiences from campfires to swimming to archery and canoeing.

It's open to the general public year round.

In addition to hosting summer fellowship camps.

While in Dry Creek, I stop at Foreman's Boudin Kitchen, famous for its boudin, crackling sausage, smoked meat and seasonings.

My parents actually started the store in Cameron, Louisiana, in the late 1980s for a series of life events.

We ended up in Dry Creek in 94, I believe it was.

People don't realize how how statewide we are and how nationally we are.

Once you walk through that door, you go into a warehouse and then an entire USDA inspected facility.

I head to the Boudin kitchen to watch how they make patriarch Mark Foreman's original recipe.

Then on to the crackling kitchen where Mark Foreman Jr is stirring the.

Pot as Louisiana.

And stirring the pot is a big deal to many people today.

I feel just don't start enough pots and you get to sit around and talk.

Talk about the day.

Talk about yesterday.

In Louisiana, everyone claims to make the best boudin, and the secret lives in the family recipe at Foreman's.

That secret lies in its signature smoky finish.

People drive in from all directions to shop at the retail store for specialty meets, all backed by a brand that stretches way beyond Dry Creek with a swag to prove it.

All right, I'll use City Slickers.

I've got an experience for you here at Kim Farms in Dry Creek.

Here you can pick pumpkins, strawberries, or watermelons, depending on the season.

Pet farm animals.

It is a working farm and it is a popular agritourism experience.

Look, it is a Friday morning, 10:30 a.m.

and the parking lot is already full with school busses, field trips and people coming from far and wide to experience life on a farm.

Farmer Chuck Melchior takes me behind the scenes of his working farm, where cattle graze and fields of strawberries, watermelons and cantaloupes grow.

We open up the agritourism business because the children are there, or be our future leaders in politics, and none of them have any idea about agriculture where food comes from.

Seeing farms stretches across 1200 acres.

It's kind of a homegrown theme park in Bogart Parish, where rides, games, a petting zoo, and plenty of picture perfect moments bring out the kid in all of us and connect us back to the land and a disappearing way of life.

Thank you for this.

It's a finalist job.

I thank you.

Well thank you.

Thank you.

I wrap up my road trip through Beauregard Parish in Maryville, right along the Texas line, with a stop at the Maryville History Museum, home to the annual Pioneer and Heritage Festival.

An 1883 log cabin welcomes visitors inside.

Built by settler Andrew Jackson Burke, a US marshal whose life ended tragically on a bear hunt.

The cabin was later moved and carefully restored in 1983, preserving the region's frontier story.

Maryville was here in the 1880s.

But the original.

Settlers.

Started coming in his.

Early as 1836.

I would say the turning point for this area would have been after 1865, after the war, is whenever, you know, we started seeing churches founding the foundations of Maryville school system started kind of you know, we started seeing that and by I would say 1890 is when they discovered the lone leaf pine trees that completely covered this area.

My guide is historian and author Joe Williamson.

He's a 10th generation resident of Maryville, and he shares stories of the community's famous residents, from Governor Sam Houston Jones to famous athletes and folk artists.

We actually had some oral paintings right over here.

We had a, you know, we call her the grandma Moses of Maryville, and she did a primitive artwork.

Her name was Gussie Loftin Townsley.

When I travel, I look for accommodations that connect me with the local landscape and the people.

While exploring Bogart Parish, I found camp in the Pines.

It's this charming two bedroom, two bath Airbnb just two miles outside of DeRidder.

But yet it feels like another world.

It is so peaceful, so quiet.

I can actually hear my thoughts, which is pretty rare these days.

I can also hear the occasional rooster crow and the horses nay out back.

More than anything.

What this does for me is it immerses me in a local lifestyle that's surrounded by pastures and pines, open land and a way of life rooted in the land.

And this is my office where I produce LA 64 while I'm here, and what I love about it.

No interruptions.

While exploring Dry Creek, I stayed at Turner's Place.

It's over 100 years old and started out as a feed and mercantile store.

The owners restored it and now it is a rental home.

Three bedrooms.

Come on inside and I'll show you around.

Inside, floor to ceiling pinewood, reminding us that we are in the heart of the piney woods.

Here's my takeaway from my time in Bogarde parish.

I jammed to bluegrass music where pickers and fiddlers keep the tradition alive.

I discovered a lesser known Louisiana culture in the Mennonite community.

I followed the sweetness of Sugar Town to the watermelon fields.

Then I found Stillness and Dry Creek with cartels, where stories are passed down like heirlooms.

From there, I trace the frontier spirit all the way to Maryville, and along the way discovered a side of western Louisiana that feels rooted, resilient, and well worth exploring.

For.

LA 60.

Four is provided by office of the Lieutenant Governor, Billy Nungesser, Keep Louisiana Beautiful and the Louisiana Office of Tourism, and by the National Heritage Area, the Saint Landry Parish Tourist Commission, Northwestern State University, and by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.