The City of Loreauville is proceeding with construction of its Acadian Commemorative Park with the first group of bricks set to be delivered soon.

With the first shipment of bricks for the walking trail to be delivered either this week or next week, Mayor Brad Clifton is hoping construction proceeds in a timely manner. Unfortunately, the park construction doesn’t have a set timeline and planning will continue as funding comes in. The project is entirely funded through donations and a fundraiser selling commemorative bricks for $150 each. The bayou side of the park alone is estimated to run in the $200,000 range.

The primary feature of the park will be floating commemorative poles. Hollow aluminum rods will be planted in the bed of the Bayou Teche, with Cypress rods inside and reaching out of the water. The rods will be adorned with the names of the Acadians who died when they first reached Loreauville, which then was called Fausse Point. The cypress poles will also raise and lower with the tide.

They also plan to install a kayak launch connected to the walking trail that resembles the original Fausse Point alongside a concrete bulkhead with the names of people who made the area their home etched into it.

The chief architect, Joel Breaux, who drafted the plans originally, hails from Loreauville and is deeply involved in the project. He builds monuments across the country, and just finished a project at the Abraham Lincoln Library in Springfield, Illinois.

The entire catalyst of the project stemmed from research prompted and proposed by the late former mayor Al Broussard. He was a member of the New Acadia Project, which raised funds to bring Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Mark Reese from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette to conduct studies of the area. He brought his students to take core samples and do SONAR and LIDAR testing looking for a burial site of the original Acadian encampment.

They at first looked in the Berard private cemetery because of a historical record of a marriage between the French Berard family who already lived in the Fausse Point area and the Acadian Broussard family that came to the region. That yielded nothing, but two years ago, they shifted focus and found pottery and porcelain artifacts dating to the mid 1700’s on Avenue B in Loreauville.

Following this find, the New Acadia project wrote the justification for construction of the Odyssey Monument, and proceeded with deeper research. Houma initially made the claim for the monument, however research showed the Acadians didn’t stay in the region particularly long. As Cattle herders and farmers, they couldn’t operate their trade in the swamps of Houma, so they made their way back to New Orleans and eventually to Fausse Point. Loreauville Road is colloquially known as Teche Point and serves as the highest point in the area. As a result, it made the perfect land for the Acadians to establish themselves.

Mayor Clifton wants to share the true story of the Acadians, instead of the widely accepted version from historical-fiction including “Evangeline,” the poem by Henry Longfellow.