The Bayou Folk Museum consist of a two-story early Louisiana type house, a doctor's office, a blacksmith's shop , and a bulding that houses restrooms . All are on property acquried by Alexis Cloutier in the 1700's from Spanish Land Grant No. 1701. It is believed that the house was constructed by Cloutier in the early 1800's , a home on this particular tract of land being clearly designated on a map placed on record with the State Land Office in 1813.

The house, just a few feet from the street, is framed by two towering magnolias, one on each side just behind the fence, constructed with sturdy old brick columns interspersed with sections of iron fencing. The ample grounds have a variety of native trees and flowering shurbs informally planted as was the costom of the early years on the Cane River. Among the trees are dogwood sweet olive, persimmon, pomegranate, fig , and pecan. there are daylilies, iris, gladiolus, altheas, hydraanya and caladums. Planted around the big house are vinca, wild fern, box wood, and ivy. Along the side fence is abelia arbor vital and there is a bed of mint.

The Louisiana plantation style house was built with slave labor in the early 1800's with the lower story of handmade brick and upper story of heart cypress mortised with wooden pegs. Originally the lower floor, now covered with concrete, was an above-the-ground basement with a dirt floor . Upper inside walls are of bousillage [mud and Spanish moss enforced with wooden pegs] now covered with plywood. The wainscoating upstairs is the orginal, as are the French doors opening onto the front porch, and many of the panes of glass are original ones. Throughout the bulding handmade square nails were used .

It is of significant importance that the Bayou Folk Museum be permanently a part of the Cane River Country and that it be enterd in the National Register because it represents an important chapter in the history of the the little French Village of Cloutierville, because it was in the early 1800's the home of Alexis Cloutier for whom the community was named in 1822, and in the late 1800's the home of Kate Chopin, the American Writer of creole stories.

Alexis Cloutier , a poor and an illiterate man , came into the area in the late 1700's when Cloutierville was known as Riviere aux Cannes . By 1816, he had acquired several large tracts of land and as a gesture of love to his fellowmen and to his God , he donated land on which a small frame church was constructed. In 1822 , Riviere anx Cannes became Cloutierville . Shortly after , Cloutier led a movement to divide Natchitoches Parish and to make Cloutierville the parish seat of this new parish . He petitioned the legislature and incorporated the town . He was so sure the petition would be granted that he donated more land for a civic buliding , but the new parish never formed .

The Bayou Folk Museum merits recognition as a place that preserves a way of life rapidly disappearing . It re-creates for today's children and their parents and teachers the everyday life of the people who worked : the farmers, the trades people , the sharecroppers , the servants , along with a glimpse of the life led by the aristoracy as exemplified by the Pleyel piana and the rosewood armoire . Bayou Folk Museum preserves a piece of the South's old plantation life that future ages may see how people of that day lived.

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