St. Mary one of three parishes in new scenic byway

These signs along Main Street in Franklin and elsewhere along La. 182 mark the Bayou Teche Scenic Byway.
This 125-mile route winds through three parishes: St. Mary, Iberia and St. Martin. According to America’s Scenic Byways, “Teche Country is off the beaten path and is a little wild with its lush vegetation and hauntingly beautiful moss-draped oaks. Following the scenic route that meanders alongside the Bayou Teche, a stream that twists and turns for 125 miles through the semi-tropical land of southern Louisiana, is a journey into the geographical heart of Acadiana.”
Teche Country was once described as the “most richly storied of the interior waters, and the most opulent.” The bayou was the center of a booming cypress industry in the early 1900s.
“The traveler can get a firsthand glimpse of giant oaks with 150-foot reach, trailing moss sometimes a yard below the branches, along the brown-watered stream,” the ASB site notes. “The opulent Greek Revival mansions scattered here and there along it appeared on the landscape as a result of the “sugar money’ derived from the area’s most abundant crop, sugarcane. If the traveler stops in the small villages and towns that have built up along the bayou, she or he can hear the authentic and uncorrupted dialect of the Acadian people.”
For more info, visit:
https://scenicbyways.info/byway/