Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainFounded by freed people after the Civil War and thriving for over a century, Morrisonville was erased by 1993 after Dow Chemical's vinyl chloride production contaminated the groundwater — leaving only a graveyard and an open-sided prayer shelter.
West of Plaquemine (Dow Chemical Road area), Plaquemine, LA 70764
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
No admission charge; the graveyard and prayer shelter are accessible to returning families and respectful visitors.
Access
Limited Access
Unpaved gravel and grass around the graveyard; the surrounding area is industrial and may have no formal visitor path.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1870 · Community founded in the 1870s by formerly enslaved people in Iberville Parish · Thriving African American rural community for over a century with church, school, and multi-generational farms · Dow Chemical vinyl chloride production (1958) led to groundwater contamination by chlorinated hydrocarbons · Entire community purchased by Dow and vacated by 1993; all structures demolished · Graveyard and open-sided prayer shelter are the only surviving remnants — documented by the High Museum of Art
Morrisonville was established in the years following the Civil War by people who had been enslaved on Iberville and Pointe Coupee Parish plantations. Land acquisition by freed families in this stretch of the Mississippi River west bank was part of a broader pattern of community formation in Louisiana's river parishes during Reconstruction. By the early twentieth century, Morrisonville had a church, a school, and a compact network of farms and family homes that made it a functioning rural community with roots spanning three or four generations.
Dow Chemical Corporation began operating a plant on land adjacent to Morrisonville in 1958, manufacturing vinyl chloride and other chlorinated organic compounds. For the following decades, the chemical plant and the community coexisted, though residents raised concerns about air quality and soil contamination. Testing conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s confirmed chlorinated hydrocarbon contamination in the community's groundwater at levels that health authorities determined were unsafe for residential use.
Rather than remediate the contamination, Dow negotiated the purchase of every remaining residence in Morrisonville. Families — most of whom had deep generational ties to the land — accepted buyouts and relocated. The last residents left by 1993. Dow then demolished all structures, leveled the lots, and absorbed the land into its facility buffer zone. The community was, in the most literal sense, erased.
The only physical remnant of Morrisonville is the church graveyard, which Dow was legally and ethically unable to destroy. The company erected an open-sided prayer shelter adjacent to the graves for use by former residents and their descendants returning to visit family plots. Documentary photographers, including work acquired by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, have recorded the graveyard and shelter as artifacts of industrial displacement and environmental racism in Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' corridor.
Sources
The framing of Morrisonville as a dark-tourism site rests not on paranormal claims but on the documented fact of its destruction. The community was not destroyed by disaster, flood, or war. It was purchased, vacated, and demolished because an adjacent industrial facility contaminated the land and the corporation found removal cheaper than remediation.
Former residents interviewed by documentary photographers described the loss of Morrisonville in terms that blur the line between physical loss and something closer to haunting — the sense of a place that exists in memory and family record but has been made inaccessible in the physical world. The graveyard, maintained at Dow's legal obligation, sits inside the industrial buffer zone. Families visit but the context of the visit — the chemical plant on three sides, the absence of any recognizable community structure, the prayer shelter provided by the corporation that erased the community — shapes the experience.
Louisiana environmental justice researchers and documentary artists have consistently cited Morrisonville as one of the clearest examples of environmental racism in 'Cancer Alley,' the stretch of the Mississippi River corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans where petrochemical facilities are disproportionately concentrated near low-income Black communities. The High Museum of Art's acquisition of documentary photographs of the site places Morrisonville in the category of documented historical tragedy.
The only physical remnants of Morrisonville are a church graveyard and an open-sided prayer shelter provided by Dow Chemical for families returning to visit graves. Reading the history of the community's founding, thriving, and forced displacement is the core of the visit.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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