buildings, managing livestock, and making most of the goods needed by the plantation's occupants. The Civil War brought destruction to the Cane River region. During the Red River Campaign both the Union and Confederate armies destroyed plantation buildings, crops, and livestock. At the Prud'homme plantation, the cotton gin was burned. The facts relating to the survival of the plantation home and Phanor's fate have become clouded by several unconfirmed stories and legends. One family legend states that Phanor was arrested by Union soldiers. He became ill as he was moved from his plantation to Natchitoches, where he died in a cousin's home. At war's end, Phanor's two sons divided the plantation. Jacques Alphonse Prud'homme kept the land that included the main house and surrounding lands west of the Cane River. Pierre Emmanuel Prud'homme took the land on the east side of the river and established his own plantation, which he called Atahoe. Alphonse renamed his home as Oakland and began rebuilding his fortunes. He adapted to the free labor economy, hiring freedmen as sharecroppers; some Creoles of color leased land separately as tenant farmers. During this era, the Prud'hommes opened a store and post office at Oakland to provide supplies and services for sharecroppers and tenant farmers. The plantation store operated until 1983, serving the larger community when the number of farm workers declined. Low cotton prices in the late 19th century and a boll weevil infestation in the early 20th century resulted in mostly lean times for the planter family and the workers until after World War II. Modernization came fitfully to Cane River. Phanor Prud'homme II bought the family's first car in 1910, while most people in the area still traveled by mule-drawn wagon. By the 1960s the family adopted mechanization for agriculture, with machines doing more of the tasks long performed by mules and human workers. During World War II and after, many of the remaining black workers had left the plantations in the Great Migration for employment in war industries. Today, Oakland Plantation is listed by the National Park Service as a National Historic Landmark and Bicentennial Farm. Open to the public as a unit of Cane River Creole National Historical Park, a unit of the National Park System, Oakland's outbuildings, sheds, store houses, and tenant cabins illustrate the daily life of a working cotton plantation. The site offers a window into the Creole colonial culture,