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Alligator Park: Natchitoches, LA

© Kathryn Morse

The brochure describes it as "unique, mysterious and exciting," an "adventure your family won't soon forget." Well, Alligator Park hardly meets the criteria for unique, mysterious, exciting or an adventure, but I love it! It is a quaint roadside park that is great for families, children's groups and adults animal lovers.

Located on U.S. Highway 1 8-miles north of Natchitoches, Louisiana, Alligator Park can be located by spotting the school bus with the hood up. The body is painted to look like an alligator (hereafter, referred to as a gator) with the open hood being the mouth. I get a laugh out of seeing that bus and have taken Hwy. 1 north to Shreveport just to see the bus. It's my favorite roadside advertisement.

To save money, you can bring your own lunch and eat at covered pavilions outside the park. The benches and tables are low to accommodate children and the trash cans are painted with amusing gator and other animal designs. They help get you in the mood for the surprises that await you.

You enter Alligator Park by going up a long ramp to the gift shop where you purchase your tickets to enter. It's a wooden structure and going up the ramp gives you the feel of entering a tree house or jungle. It's kind of like leaving your everyday life to enter a wilder kingdom.

When you leave the gift shop, there is a restaurant, water fountain and bathrooms you can visit before or after your trip down into gator land. Actually, it's not just a gator land, but there are a number of Louisiana animal species represented, some native and some introduced.

There are three alligator areas: The Marsh, Alligator Island and The Swamp. Feedings take place at regular intervals at the various sites. The feedings are announced over a loud speaker and your group will have time to get to the announced site before the feeding show from any area in the small park.

I witnessed a feeding at The Swamp. During the feeding one employee feeds the alligators what appear to be chickens while another employee does an excellent speech to teach sightseers about alligators. The speech was interesting, what I heard, anyway. The Swamp is located by a goat and sheep feeding exhibit. Children feeding the animals were talking a great deal and drowned out the much of the speech for me. I intended to ask at the gift shop about a copy of the information, but forgot to do so on my way out.

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