Grand Coteau, LA

Grand Coteau is a St. Landry Parish town on a low ridge in south-central Louisiana, with 776 residents in the 2020 census. The ridge was once called Buzzard Prairie and became a stopping place between Washington and St. Martinville before the town took its French name, “great hill.” Farming still surrounds the community, while I-49 carries the larger traffic south toward Opelousas and north through Acadiana. The old ridge remains visible in the town’s streets and church grounds.

Grand Coteau’s map is unusually school-centered. The Academy of the Sacred Heart, founded in 1821, remains the world’s oldest continuously operating Sacred Heart school, and St. Charles College followed in 1837. The town’s Black educational history is equally important: the Sacred Heart Colored School opened in 1875, later becoming St. Peter Claver School, which served Black students from several parishes for nearly a century. Grand Coteau is a Louisiana town where Catholic institutions, Black education, Creole and Acadian history, farming, and a high ridge meet.