New Llano, LA

New Llano is a Vernon Parish town with an unusually large idea in its backstory. It began as Stables, a Gulf Lumber sawmill town south of Leesville, but the mill burned in 1913 and again in 1916 and was not rebuilt. In 1917, about 200 members of California’s Llano del Rio socialist cooperative colony moved onto 20,000 acres of cut-over land and founded the New Llano Cooperative Colony. The experiment made the town a lasting chapter in American cooperative history, and the museum now occupies the former New Llano community school. Around New Llano, the local map is timberland, Leesville nearby, and a town named for a social experiment that crossed the country.