Melrose Plantation, Ghana House, State Highway 119, Melrose, Natchitoches Parish, LA

2006 Charles E. Peterson Prize, Second Place Significance: Yucca Plantation, known since 1885 as Melrose Plantation, was established in the last quarter of the 18th century by a remarkable family of freed slaves, and contains what is certainly the largest and most significant collection of buildings of Franco-African origin built by blacks, for use by blacks, in the United States. The Ghana House is a small one-room cabin of piece-sur-piece construction (log on log) with full dovetail joints at the corners. The structure doesn't have a ceiling; the space is open to the underside of the wood shake roofing. Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N1163 Survey number: HABS LA-2-69-F