Pointe Coupee, Louisiana

French-Canadian, Pierre Le Moyne Sieur D'Iberville and his brother, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne Sieur De Bienville, sailed from France in 1698 to explore the lower Mississippi River and to establish a colony there for King Louis XIV. By March 1699, the two brothers and party of explorers were travelling up the river in canoes and barges.

Soon the explorers came upon a large oxbow curve in the lower part of the river, where the meandering river doubled back on itself. Following advice from their Indian guides, the Frenchmen cut across this "horseshoe bend" at its narrowest point, a four mile cutoff carved by the river's overflows. The natives had been using this shortcut for years. The shortcut was named A Pointe Coupee, meaning "cutoff point" in English.

In time, seasonal overflows widened Iberville's cutoff point into the riverbed which the Mississippi was to follow thereafter. Both ends of the giant oxbow slowly filled in, creating the beautiful twenty-two mile lake now called False River, or La Riviere Fausse, in French.

After the explorers came trappers, then planters who grew tobacco and sugar cane. By the middle 1800's both magnificent plantations and small cottages could be found on the banks overlooking the beautiful False River.

Today, along the banks of False River, Antebellum and French colonial homes dating to 1700's and 1800's are nestled among the moss-draped oaks and magnificent magnolia trees.

Here in Creole French Plantation Country, the landscape is graced with lush fields of sugar cane, cotton and vast pecan orchards.

Louisiana's Pointe Coupee Parish is located in the heart of Creole French Plantation Country. It has become a recreational retreat for thousands who come to relax by either fishing, hunting or just "laissez les bon temps rouler" (let the good times roll)! The people, their land and their rich history is fascinating and offers visitors a unique experience.