CARMEL, La. ( KTAL/KMSS ) – Southern Living once called a tiny chapel built by an order of Carmelite monks in 1891, one of the “South’s Most Beautiful Chapels.”
Southern Living was not wrong.
Even when you’ve seen photos of the Rock Chapel in advance, pictures honestly do not give this beautiful and serenely peaceful place the justice it deserves.
The first thing you’ll notice, as your GPS is harassing you to slow down and turn onto a little gravel road, is that the entrance to the historic Rock Chapel is next to two historic markers.
One of the markers explains the link between Paul Bouet Laffitte, who frequently traded with Native Americans who lived in north Louisiana. Lafitte was also a justice in the French settlement known as Bayou Pierre. He was born in Pouyroquelaure, Gascony, France, in Mar. 1746. He also maintained relations with nearby Spanish colonists.
And no, Laffitte wasn’t related to pirates.
The Church of the Holy Apostles was built in 1856 specifically for the Bayou Pierre community. This was the home church of Fr. Jean Pierre, a native of France who became one of the martyrs of Shreveport’s Yellow Fever Epidemic in 1873.