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Thursday
May 21
1:00-5:00 p.m.
Take your choice of three tours of local repositories and museums on Thursday afternoon.
James Smith Noel Collection and the Pioneer Heritage Center at LSUS
When it was deposited at LSUS in 1994, the James Smith Noel Collection was the largest private collection of antiquarian books in the United States.
 With approximately 200,000 volumes, the collection encompasses approximately 125 different subject areas in such diverse fields as religion, travel literature, philosophy, science, cartography, natural history, moral instruction, curiosities, costumery, and the history of humor, with an emphasis on eighteenth century.
http://www.jamessmithnoelcollection.org
The Pioneer Heritage Center interprets the unique culture and social history of northwest Louisiana from the 1830’s to the end of the 19th century, the period of American settlement in northwest Louisiana. The Center comprises seven historical structures, the Caspiana House, a raised plantation cottage built in 1856 on Caspiana Plantation a few miles south of the LSUS campus; the Thrasher House, a log dog trot; a typical detached kitchen; the Doctor’s Office; the Webb & Webb Commissary plantation store; a single pen log Blacksmith Shop; and the Baptist Riverfront Mission, the only 20th century building. The Caspiana
House and the Thrasher House are both listed in the National
Register of Historic Places. The structures, exhibits, and
artifacts serve as a history laboratory for students and
teachers, for community groups, tourists, and the general
public.
http://lsus.edu/pioneer/buildings.asp
Louisiana State Exhibit Museum
The Louisiana State Exhibit Museum opened in 1939 in the days of the New Deal public works program. The circular building is noted for its architecture that combines Neoclassical and Modern design. Architects were Edward F. Neild, D.A. Somdal and Ed F. Neild Jr., all of Shreveport. The museum is a member of the Smithsonian Institution
 Affiliations Program. It highlights 18 world-renowned dioramas created from beeswax by the museum's second director, the late Dr. Henry Brainerd Wright. Rotating exhibits, frescoes, or large murals of Louisiana scenes and the Indian Gallery are other points of interest.
R. W. Norton Art Gallery and Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum
The R.W. Norton Art Gallery houses incomparable collections of American and European paintings, sculptures and decorative arts spanning more than four centuries, including a collection of Early Colonial Silver dated from 1690 to 1800, which includes several items by well-known patriot and silversmith, Paul Revere, a large assemblage of portraits in miniature, depicting famous American figures, a notable collection of paintings celebrating nineteenth century American landscape, including a large number from the Hudson River School, as well as displays of antique dolls and firearms.
 It has become particularly well-known around the country for its impressive collections of works by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. The gallery was established to honor the late Richard W. Norton (1886-1940), a pioneer of the Rodessa Oil Field in north Louisiana in the early 1930's. The Nortons
were avid art collectors, and the gallery’s initial
collection was based on acquisitions of the Norton family.
The Karpeles Manuscript Library preserves the largest private collection of original manuscripts in the world. In 1983 David and Marsha Karpeles founded a museum network to stimulate interest in learning, especially in children. Shreveport's museum, the former Christian Science church building is among nine Karpeles Manuscript Museums located throughout the United States.
On Thursday evening, while we mix and mingle at the all-attendee reception at Shreveport’s Municipal Auditorium, a tour of the old City cemetery will be offered. Take a forty-five minute walking tour of the cemetery and surrounding environs before returning to the reception, or if you are so inclined, remain with our tour guide for a walking ghost tour of downtown Shreveport (3 blocks from the auditorium). From there, return to the reception or stroll back to the hotel on your own (about 7 blocks).
Saturday, May 23
Cane River Creole National Heritage Area
Tour
1:00 p.m.-6:30 p.m.
Experience the charm of
Natchitoches,
the original French colony in Louisiana, established 1714 and
well known as the film site of Steel Magnolias.
Cane River National Heritage Area is a region known for its historic agricultural landscapes, Creole architecture, and multi-cultural legacy. Historically, this region lay at the boundary of French and Spanish realms in the New World. Today it includes Cane River Creole National Historical Park, seven national historic landmarks, three state historic sites, and 24 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Much of the 35-mile-long region is privately owned but open to the public.
We travel by charter bus to
Oakland Plantation, which was established by Jean Pierre Emmanuel Prudhomme on a tract of land granted to him by the Spanish government in 1789. Though Oakland contains a fine example of a raised Creole plantation Main House, even more important are the 27 historic outbuildings still standing on the property. This rare wealth of buildings allows visitors to more completely understand life on a plantation. Oakland Plantation has many remaining outbuildings that were used in food production. A corn crib is still extant, as is a cattle corral and dipping vat. Several buildings devoted to poultry production remain, including a hen house, fattening pen, turkey shed and two pigeonniers.
Other buildings were devoted to making life more tolerable at the plantation. The carpenter’s shop at Oakland is still intact. The doctor’s cottage, so named because it periodically housed a doctor and his family, indicates that fundamental medical facilities were sometimes available. Oakland also had a plantation store that was opened after the Civil War to cater to the newly freed African Americans and those share-cropping or tenant-farming at the plantation. This store also doubled as a rural post-office for around 100 years.
Oakland Plantation continued to be passed down from one generation of Prudhommes to another and parts of it are still farmed today. The Prudhomme
family sold the core of Oakland Plantation to the National Park
Service in 1997, which is now in the process of restoring
Oakland Plantation to its appearance circa 1960. The goal is to
portray Oakland as a working plantation and offer insight into
the everyday lives of all of the people whose lives centered
around this fertile ground for 200 years.
From Oakland, our tour will take us to Natchitoches National Historic Landmark District.
Natchitoches traces its history to a French colonial settlement established in 1714 near the Natchitoches Indian village on the Red River. Trade and plantation agriculture shaped the city's early years. The original French settlement lay south of the current town center. As the Louisiana territory became Spanish and eventually American, the town moved north to Front Street. Much of the town's historic architecture has been preserved. Today, the National Historic Landmark District encompasses 33 blocks in the heart of Natchitoches.
After browsing the shops on Front Street (be sure to visit the Kaffie-Frederick Hardware and Dry Goods Store), we’ll board the bus to return to our hotel in plenty of time to take in the reveling at
Mudbug Madness Saturday night.
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