Desire Plantation House - Vacherie, LA
N 29° 56.633 W 090° 41.833
15R E 722252 N 3314796
Fine small Creole Cottage located in Lower Vacherie, on Hwy. 644. Privately owned, it was hard to photograph, due to tree cover. Well off the beaten path, this one was hard to find.
Waymark Code: WM528V
Location: Louisiana, United States
Date Posted: 10/29/2008
Views: 11
Private home. Nice quiet area in Lower Vacherie, LA. Home looked to be in fine condition. The yard was well groomed and cleanly landscaped, from my view. Small cottage type home. A real treat I was surprised and glad I found it.
Here is alittle history I found from the register application located
here Desire Plantation House is locally significant in the area of agriculture as the only remaining
resource associated with the historically important perique tobacco industry of St. James Parish.
There were attempts to cultivate tobacco in much of Louisiana during the eighteenth
century, chiefly for the purpose of making the European market independent of British tobacco
grown in the eastern colonies. By the 1780's the Louisiana area produced about a half million
pounds annually. But in the nineteenth century tobacco was largely displaced by sugar and cotton.
By the mid-nineteenth century the only remaining tobacco growing area was St. James Parish,
where perique tobacco was produced on a small commercial scale by family farmers. Perique is a
pungent flavorful black tobacco cured by fermentation in its own juice under pressure. Regarded as
a rare and exotic product, it is used to "flavor" other tobaccos in pipe and cigar blends. Much prized,
its consumption traditionally has been the province of connoisseurs, and most of it has been
produced for the European market.