From our December 2024 issue
The St. John River flows past this place of patrimoine français, which opened in 1976 to a great deal of fanfare that included farmhouse meals, lumbering contests, square dances, and, to mark the nation’s bicentennial, an Independence Ball. The property’s 17 reproduction and original structures harken back to life in the early days of French Catholic settlement, and the oldest among them, the 1850s Morneault House, features the area’s signature nautically inspired building technique — architecture buffs will take special note of the “ship’s knees” that reinforce upstairs walls. The addition on the side of the red-clapboard home served as a post office. A one-room schoolhouse from the 1880s, a reconstructed blacksmith shop large enough to admit a shoe-shopping horse through the double doors, and a replica of an early-1700s log church help to round out the immersive historical experience. Stepping into the kitchen of one of the old homes, visitors might even be able to imagine a pot of hearty fricot simmering on the wood-fired stove.
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