Prior to Joseph Jefferson's ownership, the island was owned by Jean Laffite's brother in-law who had acquired the island through a Spanish land grant. This elevated several low hills in tidal coastal marshes. These islands originate in prehistory when the enormous pressures of the earth forced a site of pure rock salt up from a mother bed, five miles below the surface. Jefferson Island, is the first of the famous "Five Islands" of south Louisiana. The house sits on former Orange Island, now known Jefferson Island. The house has been on the National Register of Historic Places list since June 4, 1973.
The Joseph Jefferson House was built in 1870 for Joseph Jefferson, an American stage and silent film actor. The Joseph Jefferson House, also known as the Rip Van Winkle House and Gardens and the Bob Acres Plantation, is a historic house built in 1870 on Jefferson Island in Iberia Parish, Louisiana. Continue straight onto Excalibur Drive, then turn left onto Rip Van Winkle Road and proceed to the site.Jefferson Island, Iberia Parish, Louisiana, U.S. Turn right onto Parish Road 702/Rip Van Winkle Road. Site GPS Coordinates: 29.9731945, -91.975452Ĭlosest Address: 10106 Jefferson Island Road, New Iberia, LA 70560ĭriving Directions: From New Iberia, head west on LA-675 for ~8.5 miles. Visit for information about open hours and entrance fees. Site Access: This trail kiosk is located within the Rip Van Winkle Gardens. This site’s geology/geomorphology: Pleistocene meander-belt deposits of Mississippi River blanketed by Peoria Loess preserved atop salt domes of the Five Islands Trend Today, visitors can learn more about Jefferson Island and its intriguing history at Rip Van Winkle Gardens, made up of the Joseph Jefferson home and surrounding gardens. The cause of the disaster was never officially determined, but a lone chimney still rises above the water as a reminder of the catastrophic impact it had on this area. Miraculously, no lives were lost that day in the mine, but the damage to the island took several years to rebuild, and what was once a 10-foot deep freshwater fishing hole is-to this day-deep, brackish water. Once the water pressure equalized, nine of the lost barges were coughed up from the bottom of the lake. It took two days for water from the canal to refill the almost empty lakebed.
The whirlpool’s suction was so intense that it eventually caused the Delcalmbre Canal-which normally flows away from Lake Peigneur and into the Gulf of Mexico-to reverse direction, forming a 150-foot temporary waterfall. Within hours an enormous whirlpool formed on the surface as gravity pulled Lake Peigneur into the cavern below, dragging a drilling rig, several barges, boats, a newly constructed house and 65 acres of land (including a lush botanical preserve) with it. 20, 1980, an oil drilling company doing exploratory drilling in the area accidentally pierced the bottom of Lake Peigneur, creating a funnel for the lake to drain into the massive salt mine. This salt dome and mine intersected with the lake’s story just a few decades ago.
Salt was mined here throughout the 1900s, creating a gigantic cavern below Lake Peigneur. Jefferson Island rises about 50 feet above the surrounding landscape and is the northernmost salt dome in the Five Island Trend-which includes Avery Island, Weeks Island, Côte Blanche Island and Belle Isle. The weight of this younger sediment pushed up a column of salt, resulting in a landform referred to as an “island” because of its height relative to the neighboring land. The salt that formed here was eventually buried miles below the surface by more recent sediment from the Mississippi River’s various courses and distributary streams-a process which continues today. When what would eventually become the continents of North America and South America began drifting apart, seawater evaporated in basins. Like other salt domes in Louisiana, the Jefferson Island dome is made of salt deposited more than 165 million years ago during the mid-Jurassic period. The present-day lake and adjacent Jefferson Island are located on an ancient salt dome that was the site of an unusual disaster. More than 140 years ago, Lake Peigneur was described as the most beautiful lake in the South. Lake Peigneur at Rip Van Winkle Gardens What's the Story?
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