Marksville, Louisiana
| Marksville, Louisiana | |
|---|---|
| City | |
| City of Marksville | |
| Motto: Where Everybody is Somebody | |
 Marksville, Louisiana
|
|
| Coordinates: 31°07′36″N 92°03′58″W / 31.12667°N 92.06611°WCoordinates: 31°07′36″N 92°03′58″W / 31.12667°N 92.06611°W | |
| Country |
 United States
|
| State |
 Louisiana
|
| Parish | Avoyelles |
| Founded | 1794 |
| Population (2010) | |
| • Total | 5,702 |
| Time zone | CST (UTC-6) |
| • Summer (DST) | CDT (UTC-5) |
| ZIP code | 71351 |
| Area code | 318 |
| Website | www |
Marksville is a small city in and the parish seat of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 5,702 at the 2010 census, an increase of 165 over the 2000 tabulation of 5,537.
Louisiana's first land-based casino, Paragon Casino Resort, opened in Marksville in June 1994. It is operated by the federally recognized Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe, which has a reservation in the parish.
Marksville is named after Marc Eliche (Marco Litche, as recorded by the Spanish), a Jewish-Italian immigrant who established a trading post after his wagon broke down in this area. He was a Sephardic Jewish trader from Italy, believed to be from Venice. His Italian name was recorded by a Spanish priest as Marco Litche, and as Marc Eliche or Mark Eliché by French priests after his trading post was established about 1794. Marksville was noted on Louisiana maps as early as 1809, after the United States acquired the territory in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Eliche later donated the land that became the Courthouse Square. It is still the center of Marksville.
Marksville today has a population made up of numerous Cajun peoples. Many of the families have been there since the city was incorporated. These families include Gaspard, Sylvan, Trahan, Malveaux, and Zachary.
Marksville became the trading center of a rural area developed as cotton plantations. After the United States ended the African slave trade in 1808, planters bought African-American slaves through the domestic slave trade to use as workers; a total of more than one million were transported to the Deep South from the Upper South in the first half of the 19th century. Planters typically bought slaves from the markets in New Orleans, where they had been taken via the Mississippi River or by the coastal slave trade at sea. Solomon Northup, a free black from Saratoga Springs, New York, was kidnapped and sold into slavery; he was held for nearly 12 years on plantations in Avoyelles Parish, and was freed in 1853 with the help of Marksville and New York officials. Northup's memoir was the basis of the 2013 movie "12 Years A Slave."
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Wikipedia