Support for Le 64 is provided by.

Office of the Lieutenant Governor, Billy Nungesser.

Keep Louisiana Beautiful and the Louisiana Office of Tourism.

On this episode of LA 64, hit the road with me as we explore Saint Landry Parish.

From Washington steamboat era streets to Arnold Mills, revival of Acadian brown cotton to Grand Coteau, home to a Vatican recognized miracle.

And on to Eunice, where the prairie shaped the people and the music.

If you've ever wondered what makes Louisiana uniquely Louisiana, you'll find the answers here.

Along the Cajun Prairie Byway.

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

Join me on LA 60 for a journey through all 64 parishes, exploring Louisiana's less traveled past and.

Saint Landry Parish sits in south central Louisiana, right in the heart of Acadiana, with Opelousas as the parish seat.

We'll get to know it mile by mile as we criss cross the parish, starting in Washington, then on to Arnold Ville, Grand Coteau, Eunice and Opelousas.

Washington's Vintage Water tower announces a steamboat port town, still echoing with 18th century life.

The town was established in 1720, when geography, timing and trade all lined up in its favor.

About 80% of the town's structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Washington's Town Hall anchors the heart of the historic district, surrounded by more than 200 preserved properties.

This is a place I invite you to slow down, stroll the streets and ponder the past.

We have some of the homes and some of the buildings that were here since steamboat days.

There's a slip in the levee, and it's still here, that the steamboats would come into the slip and back up and turn around and go back up, up the river.

And at 6:00 in the evening, the steamboat whistle blows, and it's a three chime steamboat whistle, an authentic whistle that used to blow.

Then the 17 and 1800s.

Locals say Washington is Louisiana's third oldest settlement, backed by nearly three centuries of history visible in its streets and buildings.

I met up with Haley Corral, who's helping promote Washington's historic charm, with guidance from the Louisiana main Street program.

Let's start in the 1720s.

Washington was founded as a French trading post.

We had French trappers who came here.

They followed the bayous here, and they were trade with the Native Americans.

That was the attack apples here.

This is where they start their settlement in 1720.

So a few years later, we get our Spanish, land grant, and that goes to Jack Catawba.

Jack Catawba, essentially settled Washington in the early 17, early to mid 1700s.

Each one of these historic properties has a marker.

Come check this out.

It tells you the date that the home or building was constructed.

And a little bit about the family who lived here.

I stopped to chat with historic homeowner Stephanie Tompkins.

Her street is lined with houses once owned by steamboat captains.

The home was built circa 1840 by a man named Nathaniel Offutt.

He and his brother owned much acreage in this parish and also in two other parishes.

We have these homes and their original homes.

It's not like Williamsburg that most of them are reproductions.

These are original homes.

So it's important to preserve them.

And this church.

Saint Johns, Saint John's, has been here.

It was started, in 1872 and completed in 1874.

It's an Episcopal church.

And, it belonged to the families who actually were the founding families of this, church, and it was built by them.

So everything you see here.

The organ was here, and all of the other artifacts were here.

And we have the hymnals.

We have the, baptismal font.

We have a little collection plate that's wood.

It serves, of course, as a headquarters for the Garden Club, but we do rentals.

But in addition to that, we have done plays here.

We've done meetings here.

And every, December, the first Saturday in December as a, return because they have been so great and supported us.

We have a Christmas concert and that is a free concert.

This steamboat mural holds the steamboat whistle that the mayor was talking about.

And it sounds every day at 6 p.m., a nod to Washington's past and a good evening greeting to anyone within earshot.

The last steamboat left Washington in 1900, made obsolete by the railroads and bringing the town's heyday to a close.

Today, Washington is experiencing a renaissance, capitalizing on its remarkable collection of historic properties and the stories they still tell.

The Washington Museum and Tourist Center is the town's memory keeper.

Where I met up with Donald Robinson, senior, a native of Washington and a fourth generation weaver of antique chair caning and split oak baskets.

His work is displayed at the museum as a tribute to a disappearing craft, and the skill and patience it takes to keep the tradition alive.

If it were not for your skill present day, a lot of heirloom pieces of furniture would be lost.

That's true.

But the work it comes in stating the cards since the end, I enjoyed doing it.

Plus, it's very therapeutic.

Next, I seek out the culture keepers of Cajun textile traditions.

Which leads me 24 miles south to honor Ville.

Arnaud Ville straddles both Saint Landry and Saint Martin parishes, and it grew right where Bayou Tash meets by Beausoleil.

It's a natural crossroads, first traveled by native peoples, then by French and Acadian settlers.

The town takes its name from the early settler Jacques Arnaud.

Today, Arnaud Ville is experiencing a cultural revival.

La maison Cortazar is a culture keeper of brown cotton, a working studio opened by appointment, where you can meet the growers, spinners and weavers who promote and preserve the fiber Cajuns call Cortazar.

It grows naturally tawny brown and for generations Cajuns used it for everyday textiles, including clothing and bedding.

Our vision for the future is to really take Acadian brown cotton into the 21st century, and by that I mean fabulous design.

We're hoping to reproduce from the old, from the heritage into the 21st century.

And, we're trying to bring all of this production right here into southwest Louisiana.

And that includes getting our own micro mill so that we can do our own spinning.

In the backyard.

Rebecca Baker, a botanical dye artisan grower and earth steward, is dyeing thrift fabric using marigold flower petals.

So what we do at the beginning of our dye pot, I just have it bundled up.

So this is all of the flower petals here.

I tie it up and allow it to slowly steep very, very low heat.

And that allows the pigment to.

Be extracted from the actual plant.

Acadians were working with brown cotton in the mid 1700s, soon after exile, pushed them from Nova Scotia into a new life in southwest Louisiana.

Cajun settlers could separate the smooth seeds by hand at home, which made it a practical household crop to spin and weave.

Aletha Shannon is a fiber artist from Monroe, Louisiana, who spins yarn and weaves it into garments.

So I am hand spinning some Acadian brown cotton into yarn.

It starts as this.

This is a milled product from the cotton, so it's all nice and smooth and ready.

To turn into yarn.

And I use my spinning wheel to twist it.

And the twisting and the kind of like drawing back that I'm doing is what makes the yarn.

Mothers and grandmothers pass down the skills of carding, spinning and weaving, and they pass down the seed itself as a family heirloom.

You could plant.

Suzanne Breaux is a fifth generation Acadian from south Louisiana.

She's been weaving since the age of 12.

The skill of weaving is basically.

Just being aware of tension and just picking your colors.

And there's the skill is really more in designing the warp.

And knowing.

How you want your design to come out.

I'm at the end of my walk.

That could be an expression right?

And I would like to.

Cut this.

Warp off the loom for you and spread.

It out.

And you'll see.

Eight yards of woven fabric.

The Acadian Brown Cotton house sells merchandise made by the spinners and the weavers.

Acadian Fiber Shed operates the home and leads the revival of seed preservation.

Responsible cultivation and a traceable local supply chain.

This makes me want to go through my grandma, my great grandma's things and look for these, you know, Brown cotton blankets.

This is really a point of pride.

This is something that every every Cajun can be proud of.

And, and to be a part of telling that story and to provide that to the community is really, it's a wonderful thing.

New New Arts and Culture Collective is a creative catalyst for Saint Landry Parish and lives in a former warehouse.

It's unassuming tin facade holds a cultural treasure trove of art, craft and locally made products.

Founder George Marks imagined new new as a place to gather, create and connect.

We do shows here, exhibits, every two months and we feature artists, local artists, but also, regional and international artists that we have partnerships with.

Right now we have a member show.

And so as you can see, it's a group show, but it does it does shift and it does focus and change, depending on the theme theme.

Of the exhibit.

One side of new holds a white box space for changing exhibits, and the other side host a maker space upstairs and New Caddo, a store selling maker merchandise from local artisans and craftspeople.

Mooney doesn't stop at the gallery walls.

There's a cafe because in Louisiana, food connections with culture and art spills outside into a sculpture garden that lets curiosity lead the way.

Next, I head eight miles south to Grand Cato, a tiny town with a powerful spiritual pole, one that draws folks from far beyond Louisiana for quiet retreats and reflection.

The name means great Hill and you'll feel that gentle rise as the town lifts above the prairie.

Catholics around the world know Grand Coteau as the site of a Vatican recognized miracle at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in 1866.

A young Rccg postulant.

That's the order of nuns who started this school here, was visited by John Bachman and cured of a deadly illness, immediately.

And it was decided that it was, an actual miracle.

And it led to his canonization.

And who was John Bachman?

John Bachman was a Belgian Jesuit.

He lived in the 1600s.

But he was known for being very holy.

He was very devout.

He found God in all of the everyday things in life.

And so when Mary Wilson was sick here at the convent in the 1860s, the sisters prayed for his intercession to cure her.

Saint John Bachman Shrine is a small chapel set at the very site tied to the miracle story inside the convents former infirmary where Mary Wilson was treated and Saint Bachmann's appeared to her.

I spent a few moments in quiet reflection on this hallowed ground.

An effigy of Saint John Bachmann's.

Stands.

On the altar, flanked by portraits that depict the miraculous cure.

Grand Chateau is an old holy town.

It's small, it's rural.

But the Sacred Heart Sisters have been here since 1821.

The Jesuit brothers have been here since the 1830s.

They have their retreat house down the road.

La Petite Musee chronicles the story of the Academy of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic school for girls founded in 1821.

Inside you'll find relics of student life, photos and vignettes that recreate classrooms, student life, and convent scenes.

My road trip continues 32 miles northwest of Grand Coteau to Eunice.

The city calls itself Louisiana's prairie Cajun capital and tells a different Cajun story shaped by open prairie rather than the bayous.

Now tell me how the Cajun prairie landscape shaped the people and the place.

And so that's why they settled this area, because it was a prairie.

It was the beginning of the prairie that goes all the way to Texas.

And we are in the Cajun prairie, and it's mostly flat land in this area.

We have a lot of agriculture.

So we've got a lot of rice farms, crawfish farmers, a lot of different farming going on in this area because we got good fertile land.

The Prairie Acadian Cultural Center documents how prairie landscape influenced the culture and the way of life in Saint Landry Parish.

Everyday objects become storytellers, from musical instruments to clothing and Cajun Mardi Gras costumes from Eunice's Chase to chicken career.

They Mardi Gras.

When people come here, I want them to learn about the past and the roots of the.

Prairie and how it influenced the culture and ways they can still continue to today, or get to experience that culture today.

Eunice traces its beginning to the train depot, where CC DuSable auctioned off lots in 1894 and named the place for his wife, Eunice.

Today, it's a museum where Clovis the Crawfish, a character from the beloved Cajun Storybook, greets visitors.

The author of the Clovis Crawfish books, Miss Mary Alice Fontanel, was a resident here, and she was teaching kindergarten here in the 50s and 60s.

There was no curriculum for a kindergarten.

We didn't even have to go in the 60s to kindergarten.

So the children would bring their items for show and tale.

And then she would use that as the base of her stories.

And he's named after Clovis Dario, who was our chief of police at the time.

The Cajun music Hall of Fame, a museum next door, offers free admission and a close look at the roots of Cajun music and the musicians who shaped the genre.

Photos, albums and instruments lined the walls, and a life size tableau honors early musicians.

On Saturday mornings at Savoie Music Center in Eunice, bring together Cajun musicians carrying fiddles, accordions, guitars and teachers who come for boudin conversation and an impromptu concert.

Mark Savoie founded the music store in 1966, and has been hosting these Saturday morning jams for 60 years and counting.

It's all a bunch of very old songs, and, I don't like a big professional show, just people playing music from the heart for that reason, you know, there's no admission.

There's, you know, it's just a down home, down home.

And I think people are searching for that today.

But there's just so much fake music out there.

The fun part about it too, is like us and says it's very inclusive.

Mark's entire family shows up to play.

His wife Ann, and four children are all talented musicians.

For years they performed as a Savoie family band, touring worldwide.

It has been a community gathering place for all the greatest Cajun musicians and zydeco musicians.

Every kind of musician has been coming here in the past.

The oldest ones that formed Cajun music could come here, and we got to experience that and play it.

I mean, listen to them and learn to play from them.

Okay, I see.

Mark invites me to his workshop in the back of the store where he handcrafts Cajun accordions.

Each one is proudly stamped Louisiana made and played around the world.

In.

My road trip exploring Saint Landry Parish ends in Opelousas, founded in 1720, where the past is on display at the Opelousas Museum and Interpretive Center.

Before the Civil War, being both free and a person of color was rare in Louisiana, Saint Landry Parish was home to one of the state's largest communities of free people of color, and the museum tells their story.

That's one of our newest permanent exhibits.

Free people of Color of Saint Landry Parish in Louisiana had the second largest population of free people of color, after New Orleans.

And they were important because they laid the culture and foundation and the economy of the area.

Louisiana stories often begin with Cajun and Creole culture, but another chapter comes first.

Indigenous nations were here long before any parish lines were drawn, and they're still here today.

The schnauzer today, Apache tribe, traced their roots and Louisiana back to the 1700s through oral history for generations, their ceremonies were suppressed and even outlawed.

Witnessing the sacred Sachi dance performed publicly for the first time in more than 160 years, felt like a serendipitous privilege.

On the day I visited the Opelousas Museum.

And the culture still strong, we have our dictionary.

We just recently did a dictionary, vocabulary.

And we have food and we have culture.

At La Village in Opelousas, there's a collection of historic buildings, some dating to the 1700s, from French Creole cottages to a train depot, general store and a chapel, all of it chronicling life way back then as a native Louisiana.

And I'm always drawn to places like this, time capsules where you can walk the same grounds where your ancestors lived out their daily lives.

Traveling across Louisiana teaches me that some of the most memorable meals come from small towns, where talented chefs choose community over the big city spotlight.

I'm in the kitchen with chef Jason Hugh Gay, owner of the Steamboat Warehouse here in Washington.

It's, before the restaurant opened.

So I'm giving you a behind the scenes look at Chef Jason in action.

He's going to.

Cook one of his.

Greatest hits from the menu, which is.

Soft Shell the dream.

This is a version of a, dish that we did years ago.

And a cooking competition, like a culinary competition.

And this dish won first place in seafood.

It won, the People's Choice award.

He tops it off with a heavy cream and Louisiana crawfish tails.

Look at that.

A thing of culinary beauty.

Jason developed his culinary chops at the Steamboat Warehouse restaurant starting at age 18.

Today, he leads the landmark dining room, set in an early 1800s brick warehouse and bayou tabla.

So this building was, started in 1819.

It was finished in 1825.

Steamboats would come all the way from New Orleans to Saint Louis, Missouri, through these small tributaries, hence the name Steamboat Warehouse Restaurant.

But this, this stop, this building was the biggest stop through that route.

There were seven warehouses back in those days on the banks of Bayou Catawba.

But this is the only one still standing today.

Shopping local connects me to community, and it gives me the satisfaction of knowing that each purchase supports both commerce and culture.

The thrill of the hunt leads me to the old Schoolhouse Antique Mall in Washington.

The former Washington High School, built in 1934, spans 40,000ft² with more than 200 vendors.

If you show up and you don't find something you love, I don't know if you looked.

I always tell everybody you can kind of treat it like a race track.

You can start at the end, you know, and then you can go down, go up the stairs, go across the top and then come back down.

I feel like I'm back in high school, skipping class.

As I roam the halls lined with school memorabilia, each former classroom now serves as its own little storefront filled with vintage finds, old student and sports team photos sit on shelves, and the principal's office still wears a sign on the door.

As I travel across the state, I'm always on the lookout for lodging that feels like Louisiana, a stay with a sense of place and plenty of personality.

So when I spot the collection of train cars across the street from the Academy of the Sacred Heart campus in Grand Canto, I did a double take.

At first glance, I thought I'd found the little train depot Museum, and I got closer and realized I'd found my room for the night at the train wreck in.

You call it a train wreck, but.

It's.

Anything but a train wreck.

I mean, it's so well designed.

Where did these rail cars come from?

So, they were acquired.

They were actually a bed and breakfast just down the road in sunset.

They were, not used for at least 20 years before that.

And so we totally got it.

Revamped.

Karly and her husband, Kelly Courville, deliver a different kind of room service, if you ask.

Well, they'll prepare a home cooked dinner using local ingredients right there in your rail car kitchen.

So tonight we're going to be having venison Wellington.

Something we like to really focus on here is doing things that are in season.

From the moment I rang the chicken bell at Hotel Close, I felt like I'd stepped straight into Washington's golden age.

The pastel green and yellow building on Carrier Street once served as a general store and home owner.

Steven Ortego, an architect and developer, restored the 1870s Clouse mercantile and reimagined it as a nine room boutique hotel.

So we did a lot of extensive, extensive research on the building and found out that it was built not long after the Civil War by some Jewish merchants who moved here from Prussia.

The plant's key family.

And then Max Clowes came over, probably arrived here on a steamboat.

And then he had he and his wife had nine children, and three of their daughters ran the store all the way up until the mid 60s, 1960s.

There definitely is a movement here in Washington, a reinvestment sort of standing up tall and moving forward and making sure we preserve history here.

Exploring Saint Landry Parish takes me straight back to my childhood weekends at my mom's house in Melville, on the west bank of the river.

For me, this journey was a homecoming, a reminder that Louisiana's richness is in its everyday people, carrying traditions forward.

Stitch by stitch, song by song.

A place where you can still hear the steamboat whistle each evening.

Because history deserves to be heard.

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

Keep Louisiana Beautiful and the Louisiana Office of Tourism, and by the Atchafalaya 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.