By Karen LeBlanc, host of LA64, a Louisiana Travel Show on PBS
Traveling the Old Spanish Trail throughout Louisiana
I’m standing in the backyard of Idlewild in Patterson, and John Burke — better known around here as “Captain Caviar” — is pointing at the ground like it owes him money. First to a cluster of ancient Chitimacha Indian mounds. Then he sweeps his hand across the lawn, tracing an invisible line through the grass. That line, he tells me, is the Old Spanish Trail, and it once ran straight through his family’s land on its way from one ocean to the other.
“Back when Spain owned all of Louisiana, they built a road from Florida to Texas, and this is part of it,” John says. “So as we walk down to the boat, you’re literally walking on the same dirt the Spanish conquistadors walked on — the same dirt Union and Confederate soldiers marched up and down, right here on this road.”
I’m a Louisiana girl, raised on our gift for grandiose storytelling and tall tales, so I listen wholeheartedly, but tempered with a travel journalist’s skepticism. (I’ll gently untangle some of that romance for you in a minute.) Standing there, watching a swamp-tour captain narrate two centuries of history with a wave of his hand, I understood something about this road that no map ever taught me: the Old Spanish Trail was never really about getting somewhere fast. Before I-10 turned South Louisiana into a blur out the passenger window, this highway invited you to slow down, pull over, and linger in the little towns and communities threaded along its path.
What Is the Old Spanish Trail, Really?
The Old Spanish Trail you drive today is largely U.S. Highway 90, with older stretches surviving as Louisiana 182, business routes, and downtown Main Streets. The early 20th-century transcontinental auto highway was built between roughly 1919 and 1929, linking St. Augustine, Florida, to San Diego, California. It carried tourists, trade, stories, and a whole lot of roadside culture across the southern edge of the country.
It was the brainchild of the Old Spanish Trail Association, which formed in 1915 at a meeting of more than 400 people at the Battle House Hotel in Mobile, Alabama, and operated out of San Antonio. This was the golden age of the “Good Roads” movement, when civic boosters, automobile clubs, and business leaders were racing to connect towns by decent road before the interstate system existed. The Association printed travelogs, which were annual guides packed with mileage logs, ferry schedules, hotel tips, and local color, so a driver could set the odometer in one town and know exactly when the next was coming. Zero-mile markers went up in San Diego, San Antonio, and St. Augustine creating America’s original road-trip infrastructure.
The Old Spanish Trail Auto Highway marketing pitch was that drivers could retrace the footsteps of Spanish explorers. Historians point out that the highway’s lore is more romance than record — there was never one continuous conquistador road running unbroken from Florida to California. What the highway did follow, at least here in Louisiana, was the high ground — the same ridges and natural levees that Indigenous people, drovers, and traders had used for generations to stay out of the swamp. That, to me, is the better story anyway. The road didn’t invent the route. The land did. The road just finally paved it.
(One quick clarification worth noting: the driving highway is not the same thing as the Old Spanish National Historic Trail run by the National Park Service. That one’s a 19th-century mule-pack trade route between Santa Fe and Los Angeles. Same name, completely different route. This is exactly why Kit Carson and John C. Frémont get name-dropped in Old Spanish Trail lore — they belong to that southwestern trade route, not to the Louisiana auto highway. The names got tangled, the romance stuck, and honestly? I don’t blame anyone for it. It’s a great name.)
Idlewild and the Captain of the Caviar
Back to Patterson, where a welcome sign proudly announces the city’s spot along the Old Spanish Trail, and where Idlewild fronts Highway 90 on Main Street like it’s been waiting on you.
The house is a Greek Revival beauty that John says was built in 1850, and it sits on the National Register of Historic Places along the banks of the lower Atchafalaya River. It’s the childhood home he’s turned into the launching pad for Captain Caviar Swamp Tours, plus a cluster of bed-and-breakfast rooms where — only in Louisiana — you can book a swamp tour, a spirit-guide reading, and a paranormal investigation, sometimes before lunch.
As for the history, I’ll let John tell it in his own voice, because it’s his family’s story to tell. As the Burkes tell it, the property served as a Civil War hospital and was the site of one of the last Confederate surrenders of the war, in June of 1865. I’ll add my journalist’s asterisk here: historians have long debated who, exactly, gets to claim the title of “last Confederate surrender,” and several places make the case. What I can tell you without any asterisk at all is that a tremendous amount of history has crossed this particular patch of ground, and John will happily walk you through every layer of it.
His girlfriend, Kayla Matherne, a psychic-spiritual artist who lives on the property, has been turning up old bricks and shell-flecked mortar while gardening. “It’s a mortar that the colonial Spanish used with oyster shells and clay,” John tells me. “We’re almost thinking it could be an old colonial trading post on the property.” Is it? Maybe! Maybe not! But I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from a lifetime of these conversations: the “we’re almost thinking” is where the magic lives. That’s a family falling in love with the ground under their feet, out loud, in real time. You can’t bottle that. Well — the caviar, you can bottle. The wonder, you have to come feel for yourself.
Following the Teche: Sugar, Live Oaks, and a Little Bird Song
From Morgan City to New Iberia, the Old Spanish Trail hugs Bayou Teche, and this is the stretch where I want you to put your phone down and just look. Live oaks the size of cathedrals. Spanish moss doing its slow-motion drama in the breeze. Sugarcane fields that eventually give way to rice as you roll deeper into Acadiana. This is Cajun and Creole country, stitched together by French language, roadside diners, filling stations, and Main Streets that have been watching travelers roll by for a hundred years.
Right along here, facing the historic trail on the banks of the Teche, sits Albania Mansion — nine bedrooms, nine and a half baths, nine acres of ancient live oaks. It’s said to have hosted John James Audubon while he sketched for his Birds of America, and here’s the part that gives me chills: those same species of birds still make the Bayou Teche their home today. Two hundred years later, the models never left. If that’s not the whole point of heritage travel — the past still breathing in the present — I don’t know what is.
Where the Trail Went Official: Rayne, Patterson, and the Cities That Claimed It
Roll west into the prairie parishes and the story shifts from remembering to celebrating — and, it turns out, to certifying. Rayne, the self-proclaimed Frog Capital over in Acadia Parish, didn’t just inherit the Old Spanish Trail. It went and made things official. On October 17, 2016, under the auspices of the OST100 group headquartered in San Antonio, Rayne became the very first Official OST City in the entire country. The very next day, Lafayette and — get this — Patterson made it official too.
Yes, that Patterson. The little town where John Burke stood in his backyard pointing at the dirt is, on paper, one of the first three Official Old Spanish Trail cities in America. I have chosen not to mention this to Captain Caviar directly. The man already has a boat named after fish eggs; his confidence needs no further inflation.
Rayne honors the road with The OST Conference, held September 25th, 2026. The regional summit focuses on promoting the tourism and economic potential of the historic Old Spanish Trail (OST) Auto Highway.
Down in Lafayette Parish, Broussard joined the official ranks in 2019, and its roadside signs say so proudly. All told, the trail’s keepers count nine official cities across Louisiana — part of roughly forty so-named from Florida to California. Not bad for a road most folks blow past on their way to the interstate.
Here’s the very Louisiana plot twist: the OST100 group that handed out those designations has gone quiet — on hiatus, with no guarantee the roster ever reopens. Which means the honor of “official” may be a closed club now. So the people who love this road are doing what we always do down here when the band looks like it might stop playing: they pull chairs into a circle and get organized. There’s a movement afoot to build a coalition and carry the torch forward — because a cultural seam this rich doesn’t stitch itself. Somebody’s got to keep threading the needle.
The Trail as a Cultural Seam
Here’s what I keep coming back to. The Louisiana Old Spanish Trail is not just a road. It’s a cultural seam — stitched through bayous and rice fields, sugar towns and French-speaking communities, seafood country and old rail corridors, Main Streets and roadside curiosities that no algorithm would ever send you to.
Captain Caviar was right about one thing, even if the conquistadors are up for debate: when you walk this ground, you’re walking where an awful lot of Louisiana came and went before you. The interstate will get you across the state in a hurry. The Old Spanish Trail will get you across it in a story. Take the story. You’ve got time. This is Louisiana. We invented taking your time.
Know Before You Go
- Find the trail: Today the Old Spanish Trail through Louisiana is largely U.S. Highway 90, with older, prettier alignments surviving as Louisiana 182, business routes, and streets still literally named “Old Spanish Trail.” When you can, peel off the four-lane and take LA 182 through Cajun Country — that’s where the live oaks and the good stuff live.
- The route, roughly east to west: It enters Louisiana near the Pearl River from Mississippi, reaches New Orleans, then bends through the bayou parishes and Acadiana — Luling, Raceland, Des Allemands, Houma, the Thibodaux area, Morgan City, Berwick, Patterson, Franklin, Jeanerette, New Iberia, Broussard, Lafayette, Scott, Rayne, Crowley, Jennings, Welsh, Lake Charles, Sulphur, and Vinton before it slips toward the Sabine River and Texas.
- Book ahead for Idlewild: Captain Caviar’s swamp tours, B&B rooms, and spirit-guide readings in Patterson run on reservations. It’s a working home and business, so call before you cross the lawn.
- Bring a little cash and a full tank: The joy of this drive is the small towns, and small towns keep small hours. Gas up in the bigger stops (New Orleans, Morgan City, New Iberia, Lafayette, Lake Charles) and carry cash for roadside stands and markets.
- Mind the two trails: The Old Spanish Trail auto highway (what you’re driving) is not the National Park Service’s Old Spanish National Historic Trail out West. Same name, different route, different century. Now you’re smarter than most of the internet.
- Go slow, look up, talk to people: The whole point is the pace. Roll the windows down. Ask the lady at the counter what’s good. That’s the trip.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Old Spanish Trail in Louisiana?
The Old Spanish Trail in Louisiana is a historic transcontinental auto highway, built between about 1919 and 1929, that once linked St. Augustine, Florida, to San Diego, California. Through Louisiana it runs largely along today’s U.S. Highway 90 (with older stretches as Louisiana 182), carrying travelers through the bayou parishes and Acadiana.
Is the Old Spanish Trail the same as Highway 90?
Mostly, yes. In Louisiana the Old Spanish Trail is traced today by U.S. Highway 90, the main east–west route through the region. Older alignments of the original highway survive as Louisiana 182, business routes, and local Main Streets — often the most scenic way to drive it.
What towns does the Old Spanish Trail pass through in Louisiana?
Traveling east to west, the trail passes through New Orleans, Luling, Raceland, Houma, Morgan City, Patterson, Franklin, Jeanerette, New Iberia, Broussard, Lafayette, Crowley, Rayne, Jennings, Welsh, Lake Charles, Sulphur, and Vinton, before heading toward the Texas line.
Did Spanish conquistadors really travel the Old Spanish Trail?
Not exactly. The highway’s promoters marketed it as a conquistador route, but historians note there was never a single continuous Spanish-era road stretching from Florida to California. The name is romantic branding from the 1910s and 1920s. What the road did follow in Louisiana was the high ground long used by Indigenous peoples, traders, and drovers.
Which Louisiana town was the first official Old Spanish Trail city?
Rayne, in Acadia Parish, holds the distinction of being the first official Old Spanish Trail city in the country.
Can you still drive the Old Spanish Trail today?
Absolutely. You can follow U.S. Highway 90 and Louisiana 182 across South Louisiana and experience the trail’s towns, live oaks, sugarcane and rice country, and roadside history for yourself. For a slower, more scenic trip, seek out the older LA 182 alignments through Cajun Country.
Karen LeBlanc is an award-winning travel journalist and the host and producer of LA64, airing on Louisiana Public Broadcasting (PBS). Through her work exploring the culture, history, food, and people of Louisiana’s 64 parishes, she shines a light on the places, and the people, that make this state unlike anywhere else. Follow more of her journeys at DiscoverLouisianaTravel.com.
Suggested Additional Reading
- Staying at Maison Stephanie in Arnaudville, Where Louisiana’s Past Lives On — a restored 1796 Spanish-era home, perfect if the trail’s colonial roots have you curious.
- Bayou Cabins in Breaux Bridge: A Village of 14 Historic Cajun Homes Restored by Hand — an unforgettable place to spend the night just off the corridor.
- Hotel Klaus: A Historic Boutique Stay in Washington, Louisiana — a restored 1870s mercantile building turned boutique hotel.
- Donnell’s General Store: A 1934 Louisiana Country Store — exactly the kind of roadside wonder the Old Spanish Trail was made for.
- Inside Maison Madeleine: An 1840s French Creole Cottage Revival in Breaux Bridge — Cajun and Creole hospitality at its most heartfelt.
