For more than a century and a half, sugar was king in South Louisiana, enticing pioneers to the region and rewarding them with prosperity and progress. Southdown is located in the city of Houma in Terrebonne Parish, where 86 sugar mills operated during the industry’s boom years. The last operational mill in the Parish was the Southdown Mill, located adjacent to Southdown Plantation House. It closed in 1979 and was dismantled and shipped to Guatemala where it was reassembled for continued operation.
Southdown Plantation House is a lasting tribute to the sugar industry which helped to nurture Terrebonne Parish from its infancy to its present population of over 100,000 residents. Four generations of the Minor Family, along with hundreds of mill workers, fieldworkers, and their families, lived and labored at Southdown Plantation. The Minor Family occupied Southdown House until 1936. Over the years, the plantation owners, managers, and workers helped launch the local sugar industry, sustained it through difficult years, witnessed the cultural enrichment and progress of its boom times, and revitalized the industry from near-fatal crop disease.
Plantation life and the sugar industry are just two of the many topics explored by the exhibits of Southdown Plantation House/The Terrebonne Museum. In addition to the museum displays, the House itself, through its architecture and design, reveals information about life in South Louisiana. The house is 85 ft. wide by 65 ft. deep by 50 ft. high, with 12- and 14-foot ceilings and porches on all sides to cope with the hot weather. The walls are 12-inches thick, made of bricks hand-fired on the property. The floors are a mixture of locally available red cypress and pine. The Favrile stained glass panels, added in 1893, depict the plantation surroundings with motifs of palmetto leaves, magnolia branches, and sugar cane stalks. The current pink and green color scheme was selected by THACS to reproduce the paint colors of 1893 as discovered by expert paint analysis during the restoration. Come by and take a tour to learn the rest of the fascinating history here at Southdown!