LEONARD GRAY / L’Observateur / September 13, 2000

EDGARD – For someone who’s never lived in the River Parishes, Mary Ann Sternberg has become an expert on the area’s history, from Baton Rouge to Jefferson Parish.

The author of “Along the River Road,” first published by LSU Press in 1996, Sternberg is now hard at work on an updated second edition.

Originally from New Orleans, she’s lived in Baton Rouge for 32 years and said, “The River Road is as familiar to me as almost anything.”Nowadays she can often be found pulled onto the narrow shoulder, dodging traffic as she darts to old houses and businesses in search of the River Region’s past.

“I should get a bumper sticker for myself reading, ‘Don’t Honk, I’m Making Your Area Famous,'” she said with a wide smile.

During a recent jaunt from Vacherie to Luling Sternberg double-checked her manuscript with on-the-spot observations. Possible new items of historicinterest will be added to the second edition, from the area’s first barber shop near Tigerville to St. John the Baptist Parish’s first courthouse in Lucyto Gov. Michael Hahn’s former residence in Hahnville.”It really began to bother me that people thought of the River Road as one more plantation country,” she said. However, as her book details, the richhistory of all the people in the region goes far beyond plantations. “You cando things out here forever.”Now working for the LSU School of Mass Communications, Sternberg coordinates internships for students.

In the mid-1980’s she authored a tourism guide to Louisiana published by Pelican Publishing Co. in Gretna. It was a conversation with NormanMarmillion, who operates Laura Plantation in Vacherie, which led to writing “Along the River Road.”She approached LSU Press about the idea and “they were very excited about it,” she said. No one had ever done such a project before, and there was apossibility of making a real contribution to state historical research.

“Everything was very fragmented, though,” she reported of her research attempts in archives and courthouses. Therefore, she took it upon herself toalmost literally go door-to-door, tracking down the River Road’s past.

LSU Press suggested as a format for her book the 1930’s “WPA Guide to Louisiana,” which provides mileage between items of interest. The result wasa tremendously useful guidebook for the weekend traveler.

“With 100 miles on each bank there isn’t any way to get it all in,” Sternberg said, but her book makes a strong attempt, detailing mile after mile of historical data from the Jefferson Parish line through East Baton Rouge Parish, then crossing over and returning to Jefferson Parish.

“It was eight months of research, but then I didn’t do much else,” she recalled. Along the way she would locate the local experts and have them ridealong with her, pointing out items of interest.

“I’m trying to do for the River Road traveler what they can’t do for themselves, and that’s stop and ask questions along the way,” she said.

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