Southdown Plantation House

Southdown Plantation House is a 19th-century sugar manor house and home to the Terrebonne Museum of history, culture, and arts.  We offer tours of the house and worker's cabin settled on four beautiful acres. For more than nearly a century and a half, sugar was king in South Louisiana, enticing pioneers to the region and rewarding them with prosperity and progress. Southdown is located in the city of Houma in Terrebonne Parish, where some 86 sugar mills operated during the industry's boom years. The last operational mill in the Parish was the Southdown Mill, located adjacent to Southdown Plantation House. It closed in 1979 and was dismantled and shipped to Guatemala where it was reassembled for continued operation. Southdown Plantation House is a lasting tribute to the sugar industry which helped to nurture Terrebonne Parish from its infancy to its present population of over 100,000 residents. Four generations of the Minor Family, along with hundreds of mill workers, fieldworkers, and their families, lived and labored at Southdown Plantation. The Minor Family occupied Southdown House until 1936. Over the years, the plantation owners, managers, and workers helped launch the local sugar industry, sustained it through difficult years, witnessed the cultural enrichment and progress of its boom times, and revitalized the industry from near-fatal crop disease.