By Karen LeBlanc, host of LA64, a Louisiana Travel Show on PBS
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission from purchased products at no additional cost to you.
At six o’clock in the evening, a steamboat whistle rolls across Washington, Louisiana—long, low, and three notes deep. It’s an authentic three-chime whistle, the same kind that once announced boats coming up the bayou in the 1700s and 1800s. There hasn’t been a working steamboat tied up on Bayou Courtableau in more than a century. But the whistle still blows, right on schedule, as if the town simply refuses to let the sound go quiet. Stand on Main Street when it does, and I dare you not to feel a little shiver up your spine.
That’s Washington in a nutshell: a town that has been patiently, stubbornly, gorgeously waiting for the rest of us to slow down and notice. I came to walk its historic district, poke around a 40,000-square-foot antique mall in an old schoolhouse, sleep inside an 1870 general store, and eat a soft shell crab I’m still thinking about. What I found was a very small town full of people living very big lives—and I’d like you to meet them.
Table of Contents
Where Is Washington, Louisiana?
Washington sits in St. Landry Parish, just off Interstate 49 a few miles north of Opelousas—an easy detour if you’re driving between Lafayette and Alexandria, and worth turning off the highway for even if you weren’t planning to. The bayou that made the town is still here, curling right through the middle of it. Blink on the interstate and you’ll miss the exit. Take it, and you’ll wonder how a place this rich stayed this quiet.
Here’s the headline that stops people: Washington is the third-oldest settlement in Louisiana, behind only Natchitoches and New Orleans. Its historic district holds more than 200 properties, and roughly 80 percent of the town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. That’s not a marketing slogan. That’s block after block of the real thing.
A Town the Bayou Built: Washington’s Steamboat Story
To understand Washington, you have to understand its water. My tour guide, Hallie Coreil, likes to start at the very beginning—the 1720s, when this was a French trading post and trappers followed the bayous inland to trade with the Atakapa people. What made the spot special was geography: Bayou Courtableau meets a whole tangle of others—Cocodrie, Carron, and more—that eventually feed the Teche and the Atchafalaya. A crossroads of bayous is a crossroads of people.
“This is where everyone was coming to trade,” Hallie explained as we stood beneath the oaks. A Spanish land grant went to Jacques Courtableau, who settled the town in the early-to-mid 1700s; his family’s child was the first baptized here. Back then the settlement went by a humbler name—Old Church Landing—and the original 1700s cemetery still carries it.
The steamboats are what turned a landing into a boomtown, but they came with a hitch. “By the time the steamboats got up here from New Orleans, it was really hard for them to turn around and go back the way they’d come,” Hallie said. The fix arrived in 1848, when Captain George W. Haygood dredged a basin into the bank—a simple slip where boats could nose in, pivot, and head back downstream. From that point, Washington’s economy exploded, drawing French, Spanish, Native, German, and Jewish settlers alike. “Everybody from every walk of life was here in Washington,” Hallie told me. “That’s what made it such a unique and diverse place.”
For much of the 19th century, this little town was the largest inland steamboat port between New Orleans and St. Louis—the uppermost navigable point on the bayou, and one of Louisiana’s busiest ports. Boats stacked the warehouses with cotton, sugar, grain, whiskey, and even Cuban cigars. Then the railroads came, the boats lost their steam, and the last steamboat pulled away in 1900. But the buildings stayed. Nobody got rich enough to tear them down or desperate enough to abandon them—so Washington kept its bones. Today those bones are the whole point.
Meet the Mayor Keeping Washington’s Story Going
You can’t tell Washington’s story without the people steering it, and that starts with Mayor Dwight Landreneau, now in his fifth year in office and a walking encyclopedia of the place. His roots here go deep—you’ll even spot the Landreneau name on one of the historic markers as you walk the district.
“I was born and raised in Washington. My grandparents were here, my parents—we grew up in a grocery store, and we knew everybody in town,” he told me. “I’ve been here 76 years.”
Ask him why you should visit and he doesn’t hesitate: “If you want southern charm, great food, wonderful people, and to be in a historic environment—that’s why you’ve got to come to Washington.” The town leans into that charm hard at the holidays, when they transform the area around town hall into what the mayor proudly calls a “Hallmark Christmas,” complete with Santa and Mrs. Claus. And in a wink to the present, Washington installed one of the only free EV charging stations between here and Alexandria. “Plug in, charge up, and walk all over Washington,” he said. History with a fast charger—that about sums up the town’s mood right now.
Things to Do in Washington, Louisiana
For a town you can drive across in a couple of minutes, Washington gives you a genuinely full, unhurried day. Here’s how I’d spend it.
Start at the Washington Museum and Tourism Center
Begin where the story begins. The Washington Museum and Tourism Center on North Main gives you the lay of the land—the steamboat history, the founding families, the who-built-what that turns a pretty street into a story you can actually follow. There’s a bit of classic Washington thrift baked right into the building: it was made from brick salvaged from the old Plonsky Opera House and Store after it burned in 1902. Grab a walking-tour map while you’re here, because the whole town is about to become your museum.
Stroll Ethel Park
Right across from town hall sits Ethel Park, the first stop on Hallie’s walking tour and a little masterclass in how this town does things. It’s named for Miss Ethel Landreneau—the mayor’s mother—who, as Hallie put it, “lived well into her 90s, was vibrant until the very end, and did so many things for this community.” When the gentleman who donated the land insisted the park carry her name, the town happily obliged.
What I love is how the park got built: the benches came from the local trade school, an Eagle Scout made the birdhouses for his project, a landscape architect designed the all-natural plantings, and little markers identify every plant. There’s even a tiny lending library. It’s a community project down to the last butterfly—and the butterflies, I promise you, approve.
Take the Self-Guided Historic District Walk
This is my favorite thing to do in Washington, and it’s free: just walk. The town has done a beautiful job with a self-guided tour, and here’s the detail that makes it sing—each historic property wears a marker telling you when it was built and a little about the family who lived there. I strolled a street that was once home to a row of steamboat captains, reading placard after placard until the families started to feel like neighbors.
Hallie likes to anchor her tour at the Hinckley House. “I love to start here,” she said, “because it encompasses everything about Washington’s history all in one place.” Built in the early 1800s by a French fur trapper, still in the same family, with the family cemetery out back, its story runs through steamboat captains, the brutal 1853 yellow fever epidemic, veterans of every war from 1812 onward, and survivors of the great 1927 flood—all under one set of live oaks.
Down the way, I climbed onto a porch swing with Stephanie Tompkins, who has lived in the circa-1840 Nathaniel Offutt home for 34 years. It was built by a sawmill-and-steamboat baron, originally three stories tall before being lowered to two in 1905, and it sits on a block where, by Stephanie’s courthouse research, at least three homes belonged to steamboat captains. How did she end up here? “My husband saw the house in the newspaper. I said I didn’t know if I wanted to move to St. Landry Parish—but when he drove up, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ll take it.’”
Stephanie is, by her own cheerful admission, “probably one of the most adamant people here” about preservation, and she’ll tell you exactly why it matters. “What else would people come here for if it’s not the historic homes? These are original homes—not reproductions like Williamsburg. So it’s important to preserve them.” She’s not wrong. Walking Washington really is like stepping into a moment frozen in time.
Visit St. John’s Episcopal Church
Among the district’s treasures is St. John’s Episcopal Church, begun in 1872 and completed in 1874 by the founding families whose names fill the town’s history. The congregation eventually moved to Opelousas, and by 1970 the church had gone silent—“pigeons and all this other stuff,” as Catherine LaFleur St. Cyr of the Washington Garden Club remembered it. The club, founded in 1987, took the little church in hand and gave it a second life.
“Washington is my town,” Catherine told me—she’s a native who came back after 40 years away, from a family of ten. Today the restored church serves as the Garden Club’s headquarters and hosts plays, rentals, and, every first Saturday in December, a free a cappella Christmas concert. “The acoustics are so wonderful,” she said, “it’s almost like the European churches.” Look closely and you’ll notice the windows are painted to look like stained glass—the founders couldn’t afford the real thing, and the loving fakery is somehow even more moving.
Meet a Master: Chair Caner Donald Robinson Sr.
This is exactly the kind of encounter I live for. At the museum I sat down with Donald Robinson Sr., and I’ll let him introduce himself: “I’m Donald Robinson Sr., age 80, a native of Washington. I was born at home, and I’m a fourth-generation weaver of antique chairs and split-oak baskets. My father learned from his father; his father learned from his father.”
Watching his hands move through the cane—imported in 500-foot bundles from Vietnam and China—is like watching living history. He walked me through the difference between a plain straight weave and the intricate “carriage weave,” and warned me the cane is no joke: “You have to be careful—it’ll cut you just like a razor.” Funny thing is, he almost didn’t take it up. “I didn’t really want to learn it—I didn’t know it was work,” he laughed. “My two older brothers were weaving, and I kept bothering my dad: ‘Why don’t you teach me? I can do that.’”
Now he’s the one keeping the craft alive, mending heirloom chairs and baskets for customers from Houston to Shreveport. “It’s very therapeutic,” he said. “I enjoy it.” He told me about a state-library film called Made by Hand that captured his father at work—and one line his father spoke that Donald has clearly carried his whole life: “When I’m gone, my sons will carry on my work.” Reader, they have.
Hunt for Treasure at the Old Schoolhouse Antique Mall
If you’ve got a weakness for the thrill of the find—and I absolutely do—clear your afternoon for the Old Schoolhouse Antique Mall. It lives inside a schoolhouse built in 1938 that closed in 1984, sat empty a few years, and was rescued by a Louisiana lawyer who, as manager Kathy Ridgeway tells it, bought it “for pretty much a song” and poured his money back in. “A building is a living thing,” Kathy said. “It has a heartbeat. If you don’t take care of it, it dies.”
Today its 40,000 square feet spread across two floors, a cottage, the old home-economics room, and the gym—each former classroom now a booth packed with antiques, collectibles, and the odd antique slot machine. You can still find the principal’s office and shelves of old team photos. “We have anything for anybody,” Kathy promised, then gave me the pro tip that saved my afternoon: “Take a picture of the item, the tag, and the room it’s in—it’s easy to get lost in 40,000 square feet.”
Half the joy is the dealers. In the old home-ec building, Miss Pearl Wimberly has been selling reclaimed-cypress furniture since 1999—“This gets me out of the house,” she said, “and the people who come here are wonderful.” And in what used to be the boys’ bathroom (now its own little shop behind French doors), I met Cheryl, whose sign out front reads “Wife Daycare” and whose pineapple-habanero jelly sells out every single weekend. Only in Washington.
Take a Break at Duet’s Cafe—and Sit Where Easy Rider Sat
When your feet need a rest and your stomach starts making decisions, tuck into Duet’s Cafe, set behind the Old Schoolhouse in the former gym. Owner Chuck Duet sums up his kitchen better than I could: “We have the smallest kitchen but the biggest flavors.” There’s no stove and no grill—he cooks his celebrated burgers in an electric skillet. “It works,” he shrugged. I ordered what the regulars call the “electric burger” and left a believer.
But first, those booths. As Chuck tells it, a customer once pulled up a clip of the counterculture classic Easy Rider on YouTube and realized the diner’s vintage booths were the very ones from the film’s roadside-cafe scene, shot down the road in Morganza. The mall’s owner had picked them up years earlier at an auction, never knowing their pedigree. So yes—you can eat an electric-skillet burger in a booth where Peter Fonda’s crew once sat. Hallowed seating, cheap and delicious. And in true St. Landry fashion, ici on parle français—French is spoken here.
Where to Eat in Washington, Louisiana
The Steamboat Warehouse Restaurant
You cannot come to a steamboat town and skip the Steamboat Warehouse Restaurant—and honestly, why would you want to? Chef and owner Jason Huguet gave me the building’s résumé himself: “It was started in 1819 and finished in 1825. There were seven warehouses on the banks of Bayou Courtableau back then—this is the only one still standing.” Restored in 1977, it now serves Cajun and Creole cooking in a room where cotton bales and cigars once stacked to the rafters, with the bayou sliding by outside the windows.
Chef Jason has been here since 1994, when he started at age 18, and he’s turned down bigger cities to stay. “Washington kind of chose me,” he said. “I’ve thought about going other places, but it always comes back to—this is home. I feel like I belong here.” He’s an award-winning chef with his own cooking show, What’s Cooking, and his showstopper is the Soft Shell Vidrine: a Louisiana soft shell crab stuffed with crab meat and shrimp, fried golden, then blanketed in a cream sauce studded with Louisiana crawfish tails, minced tasso, and parmesan. An earlier version swept a culinary competition—first place in seafood, People’s Choice, and Best of Show in a single night. I’ll confess I usually shy away from soft shell crab after a few rubbery encounters; this one changed my mind entirely. “Soft shell crabs are my favorite,” Jason said, “so I put my heart into cooking them.” It shows.
Old Courtableau Cafe
For Cajun and Creole plates with a side of live music, there’s the Old Courtableau Cafe, the passion project of a genuine Louisiana living legend: David Allemond, founder of the beloved McGee’s Landing swamp restaurant in Henderson and a longtime champion of the Cajun music renaissance. When he thought he was finally retiring, Washington pulled him back. “Where else but Washington?” he told me. “This is where our families originated, where all the music came off the riverboats. My fifth great-grandfather was Napoleon’s personal physician, and he lived here. I had to be part of this.”
His building has lived several lives since it went up around 1818—a general store, then the People’s Drugstore, then a meat market for 70 years, then a hardware and auto-parts store for 50 more. David gutted and reinforced the whole thing, and furnished it with pieces of his own history, including the original bar he built at McGee’s Landing in the late 1980s (salvaged, in turn, from a Bayou Teche mansion in Breaux Bridge). Eating here feels like dinner in a living museum. Call ahead for current hours and who’s playing.
Where to Stay: Hotel Klaus
Here’s where Washington’s story turns from preservation into something even better—reinvention. Hotel Klaus (say it “klowse,” not like Santa—I learned the hard way) is a newly restored, nine-room boutique hotel whose building has watched over Main Street since 1870. It’s the work of owner Steven Ortego, an architect who specializes in historic preservation and whose own family was born and raised in Washington.
“I spent my summers here visiting my grandparents, and I remembered this building as a kid,” Steven told me. “It was falling down.” One exterior wall was six and a half inches out of plumb. He rebuilt it from the sill up. The history he uncovered is a whole town in miniature: built just after the Civil War by the Plonsky family, Jewish merchants from Prussia, then inherited by Max Klaus—who likely arrived by steamboat—whose three daughters ran the Klaus general store until the mid-1960s.
Restoration turned Steven into part archaeologist. Beneath 1909 wallpaper he found hand-painted faux marble from the 1800s and restored it down the hallways. Around a fireplace he discovered the framing was built from old railroad shipping crates—one stamped “Max Klaus,” shipped from Jewish wholesalers in New Orleans. The lobby bar, the “Portrait Lounge,” is hung with portraits the community donated—mostly St. Landry Parish faces, a few delightful mysteries. “Even though the bar’s closed right now,” Steven said, “it feels like there are other people in here with us.”
My own room upstairs—the former Klaus family residence—paired mid-century modern furniture and a cheeky little Smeg refrigerator with the building’s original wood floors, picture window, fireplace, and a claw-foot tub made for a long soak. You go to bed inside the history you came to see. “If you listen to the building, it tells you what it wants to be,” Steven said. “As you peel those layers back, it’s talking to you.”
Why Washington, Louisiana Matters
Drive across our state and you’ll pass plenty of small towns wearing their history like a faded photograph—beautiful, but fading. What makes Washington different is that it’s having a moment of rediscovery right now. A 154-year-old general store is a boutique hotel. A 200-year-old warehouse is plating award-winning crab. An old schoolhouse is a treasure hunt, an abandoned church is a concert hall, and a steamboat whistle still blows at six.
Steven Ortego said it best: “There’s a movement here in Washington—a reinvestment. The town is standing up tall and moving forward, making sure we preserve history.” That’s exactly what I felt. Washington isn’t waiting to become something. It already is something—it just never got loud about it. Go while it’s still this quiet. Walk the district, sign the wall at Duet’s, sleep at the Klaus, and stand on Main Street at six o’clock. For a moment, when that three-chime whistle rolls across the bayou, you’ll feel like you belong here too. That’s the Washington I want you to know.
Plan Your Visit to Washington, Louisiana
- Location: St. Landry Parish, just off Interstate 49 a few miles north of Opelousas
- Best for: History lovers, antique hunters, architecture buffs, slow-travel weekends
- Don’t miss: The self-guided historic district walk, the Old Schoolhouse Antique Mall, and Chef Jason’s Soft Shell Vidrine at the Steamboat Warehouse
- Where to stay: Hotel Klaus, the restored 1870 Klaus Store on North Main
- Where to eat: Steamboat Warehouse Restaurant, Old Courtableau Cafe, and Duet’s Cafe (call ahead for hours)
- Pro tip: Start at the Washington Museum and Tourism Center for a map, and time your evening on Main Street to catch the 6 p.m. steamboat whistle
Frequently Asked Questions About Washington, Louisiana
Where is Washington, Louisiana? Washington is a small town in St. Landry Parish in south-central Louisiana, located just off Interstate 49 a few miles north of Opelousas, on the banks of Bayou Courtableau.
Why is Washington, Louisiana historically important? Founded in 1720, Washington is the third-oldest settlement in Louisiana and was once the largest inland steamboat port between New Orleans and St. Louis. Its historic district has more than 200 properties, and about 80 percent of the town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places—making it one of the most intact 19th-century towns in the South.
What is there to do in Washington, Louisiana? Take the self-guided historic district walking tour, start at the Washington Museum and Tourism Center, stroll Ethel Park, hunt for antiques at the Old Schoolhouse Antique Mall (a 1938 schoolhouse), visit St. John’s Episcopal Church, dine at the historic Steamboat Warehouse Restaurant, and stay overnight at the restored Hotel Klaus.
Where should I stay in Washington, Louisiana? Hotel Klaus, a nine-room boutique hotel restored in 2024 inside an 1870 building that once housed the Klaus general store, sits in the heart of the National Historic District and makes an ideal home base.
Where can I eat in Washington, Louisiana? The Steamboat Warehouse Restaurant serves Cajun and Creole cuisine—ask for Chef Jason Huguet’s Soft Shell Vidrine. The Old Courtableau Cafe offers Cajun and Creole plates with live music, and Duet’s Cafe serves burgers and plate lunches inside the Old Schoolhouse Antique Mall.
What is the Washington, Louisiana steamboat whistle? Each evening at 6 p.m., Washington sounds an authentic three-chime steamboat whistle—the same kind that once signaled boats on Bayou Courtableau in the 1700s and 1800s—a nod to the town’s history as a major steamboat port.
How old is Washington, Louisiana? Washington was founded in 1720 and incorporated in 1835, making it one of the oldest towns in the state—third only to Natchitoches and New Orleans.
Keep Exploring Louisiana Beyond the Guidebooks
- Grand Cane, Louisiana: The Little Village That Saved Its Own Main Street
- The Old Spanish Trail in Louisiana: A Highway 90 Road Trip
- Stepping Into History at Hotel Bentley: Eisenhower, Patton, and the Louisiana Maneuvers
- The Best General Stores in Louisiana Still Worth a Stop
Helpful Links for Planning Your Trip
- Town of Washington, Louisiana (official site)
- Hotel Klaus
- Steamboat Warehouse Restaurant
- Old Schoolhouse Antique Mall
- Visit St. Landry Parish
Read Next:
DeRidder Gothic Jail: Where Elegant Architecture Meets a Grim and Ghostly History
Laine Hardy on Louisiana Roots, Guitar at Seven, and Why Music Is Meant for Good
Meet Cajun Culture Keeper Jourdan Thibodeaux
