Cane River is home to the Creoles, a unique culture recognized in 1994 when the U.S. Congress created Cane River National Heritage Area and Cane River Creole National Historical Park. Oakland and Magnolia Plantations, two of the most intact Creole plantations in the United States, represent a microcosm of a broader American experience shaped by economic, social, and political changes from the eighteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. For more than 200 years, generations of the same families of workers, both enslaved and tenant, and owners lived on these lands. Among them were the Helaire family, who worked on Oakland as enslaved people and tenant farmers from the late 1700s until the 1960s, in a story marked by determination, faith, and ingenuity.