Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park preserves and interprets French culture and colonialism and its impacts on North America during a time when Spanish, British, and other nations and empires competed for economic, religious, and political dominance in North America.
Le Grand Champ, or the big field, at sunrise.
NPS
Significance
Significance statements express why a park’s resources and values are important enough to merit designation as a unit of the national park system. These statements are linked to the purpose of Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park and are supported by data, research, and consensus. Statements of significance describe the distinctive nature of the park and why an area is important within a global, national, regional, and systemwide context. They focus on the most important resources and values that will assist in park planning and management.
Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park and its partners preserve the largest assemblage of extant French vernacular vertical log structures in the United States. This form of architecture combines French architectural traditions and various influences from around the world, including Canada, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Ste. Genevieve and the surrounding historic district’s rich cultural landscape reflects the influence of indigenous and French people in ways distinct to the mid-Mississippi River Valley area. Largely distinguished by Common Fields and a compact village, Le Grand Champ (also known as Common Fields) remains the largest extant agricultural long lots in the United States and can be viewed from park sites.
Ste. Genevieve, a colonial settlement established by the French, was important to the development of the region and the nation. The village serves as a backdrop to examine the impact of European exploration and settlement on local indigenous populations and the migration patterns of subsequent groups.
The Mid-Mississippi Valley region’s distinct Creolized culture and traditions were influenced by race and ethnicity, gender, class, religion, and labor (both free and enslaved) from the colonial to the post-Louisiana Purchase periods.
Ste. Genevieve’s French settlers played a pioneering role in expanding global trade in the 18th century by developing close but often exploitative relationships with several indigenous nations and people of African and European descent. Successful production and movement of wheat, furs, salt, and lead, as well as internationally manufactured goods, both on water and across longstanding networks of native trails, connected regional markets in the Mississippi River Valley to the rest of the world.
Ste. Genevieve provides a rare opportunity to interpret the lasting impact of French colonialism and culture in North America, even when faced with shifting demographics that marginalized French influences.
Historic Ste. Genevieve captured in the 1832 town diorama.
NPS
Fundamental Resources and Values
Fundamental resources and values help focus planning and management efforts on what is truly significant about the park. One of the most important responsibilities of NPS managers is to ensure the conservation and public enjoyment of those qualities that are essential (fundamental) to achieving the purpose of the park and maintaining its significance. If fundamental resources and values are allowed to deteriorate, the park purpose and/or significance could be jeopardized.
Historic Structures. Ste. Genevieve’s historic structures include rare, intact vertical log structures from the 18th and early 19th centuries, including the Jean Baptiste Vallé House, Bauvais-Amoureux House, Green Tree Tavern, and Delassus-Kern House. Each of these four structures demonstrates the different socioeconomic status of their inhabitants. The Jean Baptiste Vallé House has a vertical timber core structure from 1793 and has been updated with time. The Bauvais-Amoureux House is a post-in-earth (Poteaux en terre) structure originally built in 1792 by Jean Baptiste St. Gemme Bauvais and represents the residents of a wealthier class in the community. The Bauvais-Amoureux House was intentionally placed near Le Grand Champ and was later the home of Pélagie Amoureux, a free woman of color before the Civil War. The Delassus-Kern House has French colonial vertical log walls with a second-floor addition constructed by a German family in the late 1800s. The Green Tree Tavern is a large and well-preserved example of poteaux-sur-sole construction. The building has the least-altered interior of any French vernacular house in Ste. Genevieve, has been extensively documented, and retains a high degree of historic integrity.
Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park’s historic structures are contributing resources of the larger Ste. Genevieve National Historic Landmark District, which was established in 1960 and is among the first national historic landmark districts established in the United States. This landmark district is nationally significant because it possesses the greatest concentration of such vertical log buildings in North America, according to the park’s 2016 special resource study. The park’s historic structures’ placement within the town reflects the status and trades of the residents who occupied them historically. As a result, the spatial relationships between Ste. Genevieve’s historic structures are an important character-defining feature of the historic district. In addition, the park has a growing collection of historic building components.
Views of Le Grand Champ. Early French Canadians were drawn to Ste. Genevieve for its rich agricultural land, which they organized as Le Grand Champ (translates to “The Big Field”), also known as the Common Field. An integral relationship between Le Grand Champ and the historic buildings in Ste. Genevieve is preserved in the views between them. The National Park Service-owned Bauvais-Amoureux House and Delassus-Kern House retain the historic views of Le Grand Champ that the houses located on St. Marys Road had. Lots in Le Grand Champ were individually owned, and land became communal after the annual harvest for pasturing, according to the park’s 2016 special resource study. Le Grand Champ is about 7,000 acres, and its viewshed is protected in part by its floodplain, which constrains and generally prevents development efforts. Resources that are significant to local indigenous communities are also present within this viewshed.
Cultural Landscapes. The lands that the National Park Service manages in Ste. Genevieve are portions of the preserved cultural landscapes of the city of Ste. Genevieve and its surroundings. Cultural landscapes at the park exist within the city’s intact original street grid, which was laid out after its 1785 flooding event. The city plan evolved as the settlements in the new town expanded along the two Gabouri Creeks and their combined flow northward to the Mississippi River. Cultural landscapes managed by the park and its partners contain American Indian trails that have been identified by members of the Osage Nation. These landscapes contain a high potential for archeological resources.
Archeology. Archeological sites within these areas provide the material evidence of the diverse cultural peoples and activities of those who lived and worked in the city during its long period of significance from the mid-18th century through the mid-19th century (national historic landmark district) and until the mid-20th century (National Register of Historic Places historic district). Sites identified to date also contain evidence and artifacts associated with enslaved people from African descent in Ste. Genevieve. Archeological collections, including significant records and artifacts, may grow over time as items are donated to the park.
Living Cultures and Traditions. Ste. Genevieve is a living community that continues to evolve and is ever mindful of preservation of traditions and practices from the past. The multicultural diversity of Ste. Genevieve contributes to the dynamic evolution of its living cultures and traditions. These cultural traditions, although modernized to a certain degree, continue to this day, as evidence by the large number of local and regional events, community cooperation, and outreach to share and celebrate public and oral histories.
A view of winter from the Bauvais-Amoureux House.
NPS
Interpretive Themes
Interpretive themes are often described as the key stories or concepts that visitors should understand after visiting a park—they define the most important ideas or concepts communicated to visitors about a park unit. Themes are derived from, and should reflect, park purpose, significance, resources, and values. The set of interpretive themes is complete when it provides the structure necessary for park staff to develop opportunities for visitors to explore and relate to all park significance statements and fundamental resources and values.
Architecture
The blending of building traditions exemplified by Ste. Genevieve’s historic structures represents a distinctive architectural style once common across colonial Louisiana and reflects the negotiation of identity and struggle for unity within an international community.
Cultural Landscape
Ste. Genevieve’s rich natural qualities and advantageous geography were attractive for indigenous nations and later people of European and African descent. The cultural landscape was shaped and reshaped as each migration brought different relationships between community and the land they relied on.
Migration/Colonization
Ste. Genevieve exemplifies how human migration is a process of ebb and flow. Each decision to move creates a current of change that touches both individuals and widespread communities, reverberating through their experiences, ideologies, and traditions. ·
While British colonialism dominates American history, Ste. Genevieve provides a rare opportunity to interpret the lasting impact of French colonialism and culture in North America, even when faced with shifting demographic and political landscapes that diminished French dominance.
Diverse Cultures
Influenced by indigenous, European, and African people, creolized culture as it developed in the Mid-Mississippi Valley region is an opportunity to explore the evolution of culture, identity, and the reciprocal relationship between individuals and their communities.
Economy
Ste. Genevieve participated in an emerging system of global trade and exemplified the opportunities and inequalities of an economy based on colonialism, the institution of enslavement, and relationships with indigenous peoples
