(The Boudreaux Oak is located at 2049 LA. Highway. 1, about 1/4 mile south of the St. Charles bridge, on the west bank of Bayou Lafourche. There is another large oak directly on the shoulder of LA. Hwy. 1 at the driveway to the Boudreaux home. This is a private residence.) This oak is one of the…
(The Bayou Lafourche Gem Oak is located on the bayou side of the road at 521 LA Highway 308. This is south of Thibodaux.) According to current Gem Oak owner Sally Marshall Masterson, the tree is named after her father whose initials were G.E.M – George E. Marshall. The oak was registered with the Live Oak…
The written history of Bayou Lafourche begins in the late 1700s with the arrival of the first European settlers to the area. But the history of the oaks and all they’ve witnessed along the bayou is much older. The name, “Lafourche,” is French and means “the fork.” That’s because the bayou branches off of the…
(The Faucheaux and Constant Oaks are located at 649 Highway 308, about three miles south of downtown Thibodaux traveling toward Raceland and 3/4 mile past the Laurel Valley Village.) The Faucheaux Oak (on the left in the photo above) is one of the older oaks along Bayou Lafourche with a girth of 26 ft, 10…
(You can find the Ridgefield Plantation home from two directions – from St. Mary Street, turn at the stoplight onto Ridgefield Road and drive approximately 1/4 mile to Young Place. Turn right and then take the first right turn onto Len Street. Len Street curves around to Len Court which ends in a small cul-de-sac. There, you’ll see…
(St. Joseph Cemetery is located at 660 East 1st St. – or Hwy. 1 – heading South from downtown Thibodaux. The oaks are visible from East 1st. directly behind the mausoleum. You can turn into the parking lot on the side of the cemetery to get a closer view.) These two oaks behind the mausoleum at…
(The St. Joseph Co-Cathedral Oaks are located on the corner of Canal St. and 7th St. just a few blocks west of downtown Thibodaux. The oaks are best viewed from behind the cathedral, on President Street.) The group of oaks at the rear of St. Joseph Co-Cathedral was planted in the 1920s, near the time the…
(From St. Patrick Street, drive 1.5 miles north on Bayou Road [Hwy 308] then turn right onto Abby Road. One block on your left is 101 Abby Road.) The Abby Oak is listed on the Live Oak Society registry as #471. When registered by Mr. Leslie Daigle in the 1960s, it measured 22 feet 2…
(The tour sign for the Acadia Plantation oaks is located on the west shoulder of Highway 1, south of downtown Thibodaux, and in front of the John Folse Culinary Institute building at Nicholls State University, 918 LA Hwy. 1). Acadia Plantation once encompassed a much larger tract of land that includes parts of the Nicholls State…
In April 1934, Dr. Edwin Lewis Stephens, the first president of the Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), published an article in the Louisiana Conservation Review titled, “I Saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing.” (A copy of this article can be found here.) From his orientation as a scholar and poet,…
