There's nothing there now but a bunch of weeping willows, but in the nineteenth century, below the St. Francisville bluff was one of the most important ports on the Mississippi River. Bayou Sara had a mile of cotton warehouses, plus extensive residential and commercial districts. Who were the hardworking immigrants who settled there, why did they come and from where, and why did they stay through floods and fires and wartime shelling for more than a century? This book answers some of those questions for the first time, with fascinating collections of early images and excerpts from memoirs, journals, and newspaper dispatches that shed some light on this intriguing ghost town.