Just south of Natchitoches, the rural Cane River roads are dotted with ramshackle houses and small farms. As you drive past farmers sitting on porches and women hanging out the wash, you'll come across many plantation homes , some overgrown and in sad disrepair, others beautifully restored.

The Cane River National Heritage Area , a collection of restored plantation homes, churches and forts, stretches for 35 miles south from Natchitoches. Head first for the fascinating Melrose Plantation (daily noon-4pm; $6), on Hwy-119, which was granted in 1794 to Marie Therese Coincoin, a freed slave, by her owner, Thomas Metoyer - the father of ten of her fourteen children. With remarkable resourcefulness Coincoin assembled the original grounds and additional land grants into an 800-acre plantation; she was later able to buy freedom for two of her children and one of her grandchildren. Around 1900, enterprising Melrose owner "Miss Cammie" Henry - a collector and patron of local writing - turned the crumbling Melrose into an arts community, visited by painters and writers such as William Faulkner and John Steinbeck, and in the 1940s a black Melrose cook, Clementine Hunter , began to use materials discarded by visiting artists to paint vivid images of life on and around the plantation. She carried on painting until her death at the age of 101, and her works have since become valuable pieces of folk art. Many of them are on show in the 1800 African House , which resembles a Congo mud hut and was used as the slave jail, and in the Big House, a typical plantation home, made from brick and bousillage .

Cane River National Heritage Area

• Cane River National Heritage Area

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