Venus House, a French Creole style home originally located in the small community of Grand Prairie, was the first building relocated to Le Vieux Village in 1973 after being donated by the Earl Fontenot family. In 1975 it was restored and opened as the new Opelousas Tourist Center under the direction of the Opelousas Tourist Commission, and it later housed the Jim Bowie Museum. The house is named for former owner and occupant Marie Francois Venus, a free Creole woman of color who lived there during the 18th century; other former owners included Guillory, Doucet, Bourque, Perkins, and Fontenot. One of the oldest houses of its kind in the Lower Mississippi Valley, it was constructed entirely with mortise and tenon construction and features bousillage, a natural insulation once common in the walls of Cajun and Creole dwellings, made by mixing mud with moss or animal hair and held in place by wood bars called barreaux set between the posts, with hay or prairie grass sometimes substituted for Spanish moss. Its open porch survives despite the enclosure of many porches on Louisiana Creole houses, and its early and unusual French mantel also remains. The house became the centerpiece of Le Vieux Village, and the Kiwanis Club of Opelousas funded its relocation; it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.