Rip Van Winkle Gardens

 In the late 19th century, Joseph Jefferson spent his career performing Rip Van Winkle and a successful career it was.  He purchased an island in Acadian Louisiana and built a winter home in the Great American Style. 

 We spent a lovely, warm day enjoying his island.

We started with an excellent lunch on the patio of the Jefferson Café. 

 Most of us dined on caesar salad and a heavenly seafood heaven, a creamy basil sauce chockful of shrimp, crab, and crayfish atop angel hair pasta.  It was difficult to narrow the dessert choices down to just one.  We were so pleasantly full that we happily settled into the rocking chairs on Jefferson’s porch. 

The weather was so pleasant we were reluctant to go inside, but it was worth leaving our comfort to see this beautiful home.  Jefferson sold the home to Jack Ballis in 1920.  Ballis and later his son made the house even more of a show case.  The Ballis family made their fortune first in whiskey and then in salt.  In 1950 the son arranged for the house to become a museum.  Again, photographs of the interior are not allowed.

Among the things we saw are excellent pieces of French furniture along with a painting of Marie Antoinette.  The library has a folding captain’s desk that has swinging cases for file storage.  Coins alleged to have been pirated by Jean Lafitte are in a case on the mantle.  President Grover Cleveland slept in the visitor’s room.  The dining room is set with Limoges china and has a steamboat gothic ceiling.

Near the house is a more modern structure, a 1950s bomb shelter

Ballis and his French gardener created acres of gardens.  Our walk took us to a tea house and by sculptures ranging from modern to Asian.

 The air was filled with the screech of peacocks in full display.  Raccoons pranced among the tree branches.

In 1980 this island suffered a startling event.  The lake in front of the house had a large salt dome which was an active salt mine.  Also on the lake were oil and gas drilling.  For still unknown reasons these two industries collided resulting in a gigantic sinkhole destroying sixty-five acres.  The miners, some down 1500 feet, were all evacuated within forty-five minutes of the event without any loss of life.  The legal dispute was the biggest lawsuit in Louisiana history.