The legend of Oak and Pine Alley tells of a wedding party, of trees dripping Spanish moss and golden spiderwebs, and of a bride—or maybe two—walking toward a house at the end of an alley that feels like winding through a green fairytale.

This is the story associated with the former oak and pine plantation of St. Martin Parish. A sign on La. 96, east of St. Martinville, gives details: The lane is attributed to Charles Durand, a Frenchman and plantation owner with over 15 children, a plantation along Bayou Teche, and the ability to hang imported gold and silver-dusted spider webs along the lane for his daughter’s wedding.

Looking up at the pine trees, it is easy to imagine what an elaborate celebration took place, even though the Durand family home is long gone. Alone, in the middle of a sugar cane field, a gravel-paved lane lined with old trees still stands as a memorial to the past.

All that glitters is not gold

It looks like a place where one or another festival must have taken place under a canopy of beautiful nature – but according to Patricia GuteKunst, historian and genealogist at the St. Martin Parish Library, the true story bears little resemblance to the legend.

She says the Durand family emigrated from France at the turn of the century, shortly after the first Acadians arrived. Charles Durand bought the property from the Judice family, and the lane originally ran from the house to the bayou.

The house must have been full of children – Durand had six surviving children with his first wife, Marie Amelie LeBlanc, and possibly 12 or 13 with his second wife, Alida Verrette.

Many of the lore surrounding the lavish event states that it was a double wedding. According to church records, the only double wedding in the family took place on May 21, 1870. The wedding was for two of Durand’s daughters from his second marriage – Marie Eloise and Marie Philomene.

And while it’s possible that the wedding took place in their home, GuteKunst says the story doesn’t really match the fairy tale.

Details are incorrect

First of all, the wedding date is disputed. Some believe it took place in 1850, when Durand was at the height of his wealth.

This date is mentioned in the 1999 book “Memories of St. Martinville” by Charles Larroque. He wrote that the wedding was marked by an extravagance “that rivaled even that of Versailles.”

According to Larroque, “Durand’s slaves decorated the avenue of trees in a manner befitting his eccentric nature. Countless web-spinning spiders (some say they came from the nearby Atchafalaya Basin, others say they came from as far away as China) were brought in and released into the trees to ply their spinning trade. Then the slaves set about their task of covering the dewy, billowing webs with gold and silver dust blown from bellows. And under this glorious shimmering canopy passed the ethereal stroll of the wedding party and their two thousand guests.”

GuteKunst disagrees, because although there are records of marriages in the family before the Civil War, there were no double weddings.

“Two of his daughters from his first marriage were married in 1853 and 1859. They may have been outdoors, there may have been cobwebs in the trees,” she says. “There is no record of the kind of extravagance that people assume.”

In addition, the civil war brought significant changes to the family’s fate.

“By 1870, the family no longer lived on the property, so the wedding probably did not take place there. Charles and Alida had lost the land and were living in a house given to them by their neighbors, the Barras.”

“He died a broken man.”

Charles Durand died in November 1870.

“He died a broken man,” says GuteKunst. “In 1870 he had no money left. It’s just a nice story that has been passed down through generations.”

Oak and Pine Plantation and two others in the area – Banker Plantation and St. John Plantation – went bankrupt after the war. Jean Baptiste LaVert, a New Orleans realtor, took over the properties and reserved them for agricultural use. GuteKunst says this land and others in southern Louisiana and on the Gulf Coast are still owned by descendants of the LaVert family.

After the Durands left Oak and Pine, the house was abandoned and eventually demolished at an unknown date. Today, a few smaller, occupied houses, probably built much later by the new owners, lie at the end of the lane.

A good story tends to take on a life of its own, regardless of its veracity. The origins of the imported spiders and gold dust are somewhat murky, but GuteKunst says there is a file on the Durands in the library’s genealogical records that contains some clues.

A note in the file, written by an unknown author, deals with family history and biographical details. It refers to a family member, Stella Marie Durand, who had a penchant for the fantastic and loved to tell stories about Charles Durand.

“I remember Aunt Blanche often chiding Stella for ‘telling such stories,'” the note says. “But Stella liked to tell them, and writers wanted to hear such things. They never doubted their stories and never researched them, and so their stories about the cobwebs over Pine Alley, etc., have survived in many novels of the period and even in special articles that appeared at various times in Life magazine and Readers’ Digest.”

It continues: “Long before the famous wedding is said to have taken place, Charles – who was evidently a great spendthrift (confirming the fact that they must have brought money and resources with them from France) – had lost the house by the time of his death.”

The stories about Stella Durand were probably told in the 1940s or 1950s and are based on her communications with Harnett Kane, a New Orleans-based journalist and novelist who wrote extensively about southern Louisiana.

Later, artist George Rodrigue further cemented Oak and Pine Alley’s place in local lore. His 1974 painting “The Cajun Bride of Oak Alley” depicts a lone woman in white next to a tree painted in his “Dark Oak” style with a spider’s web hanging from its branches.

READ MORE: From the Acadians to the Blue Dogs, Rodrigues’ work covers Cajun culture from past to future

In the 1950s, a real wedding was held in Oak and Pine Alley, bringing the legend to life. Two Durand sisters were married in a reenactment ceremony in the alley – but it is doubtful that even that occasion reached the level of luxury attributed to the mythological wedding.

With all the stories attributed to this place, Oak and Pine Alley has become a cultural landmark. In a community largely populated by Catholic descendants of Acadian and French settlers, it is now a stop on the annual Stations of the Cross pilgrimage, where devotees travel miles to pray at each Station of the Cross, usually before Easter.

History buffs, nature lovers and curious travelers can drive along Oak and Pine Alley at 1005 Pine Alley Drive, St. Martinville. The road serves primarily as an agricultural thoroughfare and stretches about a mile from La. 96 to Parish Road 4.