Jacques Telesphore Roman completed Oak Alley in 1839, planting twenty-eight live oaks in parallel rows that frame the mansion's approach from the Mississippi levee. Each tree stands twelve feet in circumference; dendrochronologists date the oldest specimens to the 1710s, decades before French colonists cleared the land for indigo. The quarter-mile alley predates the house itself, planted by an unknown settler whose vision outlasted three property transfers and two national flags. Roman's Greek Revival design—fourteen Doric columns across the front gallery, fourteen more at the rear—mirrors the oak count, a symmetry that colonial planters read as divine proportion. The estate operated as a sugar plantation until 1866, when emancipation and falling commodity prices forced the Roman heirs to sell. Josephine Stewart purchased the property in 1925, opening it to tourists in 1940 and establishing the restoration endowment that funds current conservation work. Her heirs transferred ownership to a nonprofit foundation in 1972, ensuring public access and archival preservation. Today the estate interprets both planter affluence and enslaved labor through dual narratives. The Big House tour examines Roman family wealth—imported Carrara marble mantels, hand-painted ceiling medallions, Baccarat crystal chandeliers—while restored slave quarters on the grounds document the lives of the 220 people who cultivated, milled, and refined the cane that generated that wealth. Exhibits include ironwork forged on-site, cypress timber hewn from surrounding swamps, and account ledgers recording individual names, ages, and sale prices. The surrounding bayou ecosystem frames the second half of most New Orleans plantation and airboat tour itineraries. Manchac Swamp, accessible via Highway 51 north of LaPlace, shelters bald cypress groves where Spanish moss curtains the waterways. Airboat operators navigate narrow channels past alligator nesting sites, great blue heron rookeries, and submerged tupelo stands. The contrast—formal architecture against primordial wetland—defines Louisiana's cultural geography, where European land-use patterns collided with subtropical hydrology that resists permanent settlement.