Rip Van Winkle Gardens and Joseph Jefferson House

 Located on Jefferson Island which is home to Lake Peigneur.  On Nov 20th 1980 it was subject to a drilling disaster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddlrGkeOzsI  This link takes you to a great video about the disaster.  It is worth your time to watch.

The Rip Van Winkle Gardens are a twenty five-acre semi tropical paradise that captures the senses and cleanses the soul. Discover a year-round explosion of color where irises, magnolias, hibiscus, camellias, azaleas, thousands of springtime bulbs and a breathtaking array of annuals paint a landscape across the Southern sky.

The story of Rip Van Winkle Gardens is twofold. It begins with an actor who searched for a place of peace and beauty and who made Jefferson Island hospitality a byword. It continued with the life of a man with a keen sense of aesthetics who sought to create a delightful outdoor space that would display various formal and informal garden designs, as well as a visual integrity that would mirror the surrounding landscape. The integrity, vision, and hospitality continue in a family that sees the peace and beauty that the actor saw over a hundred years ago, a special place of peace and beauty that they want to share with all.

Three treasure chests belonging to the pirate Jean Lafitte were dug up under these oaks.  You can see some of the treasure in the house, but they won't let you take pictures inside.

The Joseph Jefferson Mansion, built in 1870 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is a charming twenty-two room Southern mansion, with a fourth-story cupola. Jefferson sited it among 350-year-old-oak trees high atop the salt dome, at an elevation of 75 feet above sea level - almost unheard of in the coastal areas of south Louisiana.

The home is an architectural treasure reflecting Moorish, Steamboat Gothic, French and Southern Plantation styles, harking to the Victorian age of elegance and grandeur. It stands as the centerpiece of the Gardens, and its richly appointed with heirlooms, period paintings, rare Louisiana pieces and fine examples of American and French Empire furniture.

All these pictures are of Stacy and the Cleveland Oak.  President Cleavland used to nap under this tree.