Audubon State Historic-Site, Saint Francisville, LA, USA

Audubon State Historic Site

Constructed in 1801, Oakley Plantation rests within the Audubon State Historic Site, a part of the Louisiana Office of State Parks in Historic St. Francisville, La. The park is located 20 minutes north of Baton Rouge off the Great Mississippi River Road, U.S. Hwy 61. Today 100 acres of the original Oakley Plantation, where artist naturalist John James Audubon stayed in the late summer of 1821 is open to the public.

The site is open from 9am to 5 pm Tuesday - Saturday. The site includes an interpretive center and guided tours are offered daily of Oakley House from 10 am to 4 pm on the hour. Visitors may tour on their own the gardens, slave cabins, barn and kitchen of the plantation. The park has a nature trail, a covered picnic pavilion seating 50, and an open picnic area seating over 100.

Admission is $4.00 for ages 13-61, free for seniors 62 and older, and free for children ages 12 and under.

"The rich magnolias covered with fragrant blossoms, the holly, the beech, the tall yellow poplar, the hilly ground and even the red clay, all excited my admiration. Such an entire change in the fall of nature in so short a time seems almost supernatural, and surrounded once more by numberless warblers and thrushes, I enjoyed the scene."

So reads the journal of John James Audubon as he recorded his arrival in 1821 at Oakley Plantation.