21997 Highway 23
West Point a La Hache, LA 70083
29.501881,-89.717252
As one travels about thirty miles south of the extremely up-tempo beat of which is New Orleans, you run into the complete polar opposite. You will encounter a near barren land of swamps, marshland, creeks, bayous, sloughs, lakes, rivers and every other body of water you can fathom, mixed in with a few residential areas. All signs of an eroding coastal area, slowly shrinking year after year. With hundreds of hurricanes pummeling this area over centuries, this area is slowly transforming to a hydrated wasteland. An area that was once swarmed with over sixty grand plantation homes and acres upon acres of farmland looks quite different today with only a couple of antique homes as a reminder of a land that time forgot.
One of the few plantation homes that still stand in this area is Woodland Plantation in a small community of Port Sulphur known as West Point a La Hache which translates into “point of the axe.” The plantation was originally built in mid-1830 by William Johnson, a river pilot/captain/pirate (depending on how polite you are) from Nova Scotia. Prior to the turn of the nineteenth century, with the aid of his partner, George Braddish, Johnson would build the now defunct Magnolia Plantation, which once sat approximately four miles from Woodland. Along with both men’s wives and children, the whole bunch would live under one roof as an antique Brady Bunch of sorts. The Woodland property would consist of the main house, an overseer’s house, tenant’s house and two-story brick slave quarters, which are a very rare site for the time, as the only property to have such slave quarters are at the previously mentioned Ormond Plantation. According to the Woodland Plantation website:
