Audubon State Historic Site


Audubon State Historic Site is a state park property in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, between the towns of St. Francisville and Jackson. It is the location where noted ornithologist and artist John James Audubon spent the summer of 1821.
Visitors come to see Oakley Plantation house, where Audubon lived at the time, and the surrounding plantation grounds. A portion of the site contains the forest which served as a setting for many of the 32 Birds of America paintings that Audubon created or began while at Oakley.

Plantation house

Built circa 1806, the Oakley Plantation house is an example of early Anglo-American architecture in Louisiana, located on its historic site. Its interior rooms have been renovated in the style of the Federal period.
Audubon spent four months at the home in 1821, teaching Eliza Pirrie, the teen-aged daughter of the plantation's owners James Pirrie and Lucretia "Lucy" Alston, to draw. This is when he completed his nature drawings on the site.
The house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 for its historical significance.

Photo gallery