Lacombe Heritage Center

Organized in 1976, registered as a nonprofit with the state in 1981, the Lacombe Heritage Center is an educational and community advocacy organization whose mission is to preserve, protect, promote, present, and pass along the environmental, historical, and cultural heritage of our region. We have no dues; only doers. All workers are volunteers. All funds go to projects.

In March 2017 we began our Restore the Northshore Adopt-A-Spot Cypress Tree Planting Project by planting the first five-hundred of 15,000 bald cypress seedlings in St. Tammany Parish. (See newspaper article below) This is a on-going project that will grow in multiple ways for the benefit of our people for generations.

Through our Heritage Corridors and Themed Trails program we are developing several profitable recreational trails along 520-miles of the Louisiana Scenic Bayous Byway between the Pearl River and the Mississippi. These include several land greenways, such as the Choctaw Nature Trail & America's WETLAND Birding Trail, and two aquatic blueways: Le Tour du Iberville and the Bartram Wilderness Adventure and Resource Restoration Trail. These initiatives connect with other National and International Heritage Areas.

We cooperate with private and public entities such as the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, the National Geographic Society, the Foundation for Louisiana, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism; as well as corporations like Home Depot, Target, Rouse's, and firms like Spartan Construction.

We seek your support as well.We seek grants and donors to fund our Corridor Management Plan projects across the fourteen Florida and River Parishes. Among others, our Corridors & Trails Rural Tourism Economic Development Initiative is the method used to enlighten our citizens, enhance communities, and entice tourists.
Using student volunteers in our Junior Ranger Program, our Adopt-A-Spot:Learn-Work-Play applied a DEQ grant to clean up and restore portions of the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge and the Pearl River.
We work in collaboration with other nonprofits like the Association for Retarded Children, the Boy Scouts of America, Council on Aging St. Tammany, Recreation Districts, and Nature Parks.

Testimonials

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Deep roots: Cypress-planting project honors 9-11 victims as it greens the parish

BY ANDREW CANULETTE | Special to The Farmer Apr 5, 2017 - 7:15 am (0)

People who know Mike Cambre know he's a civic activist with a lot of ideas. He has tremendous energy and passion about the things he cares about.

And Cambre cares about the north shore. He lives in Mandeville and often can be found helping out at local sporting events, nonprofit functions and more.

His latest endeavor is one of his biggest. He is the project manager for an initiative called "Restore the Northshore: Adopt-A-Spot Bald Cypress Tree Planting Project." The goal is to plant 15,000 cypress trees across St. Tammany Parish over the next four tree-growing seasons (each spring and fall through early 2019.)

The program is partnered with the Lacombe Heritage Center's 9/11 Living Memorial Project, and the aim is to place 2,996 cypress trees at five locations.

Those numbers are significant, Cambre said. There were 2,996 people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City, Washington, D.C., and aboard United Flight 93. And of those nearly 3,000 victims, five were Louisiana residents - Michael Scott Limana, Kevin Wayne Yokum, Elizabeth Ann Farmer, Robert Joseph Hymel and Louis Calvin Williams.

Williams was a Mandeville resident when he died at the World Trade Center. He was 53.

To Cambre, the mission is twofold - it helps memorialize those who perished on that fateful day 16 years ago, and it brings new life to the parish landscape.

"We're trying to restore our coastline," Cambre said. "Planting cypress is logical. It's a long-living tree, and it's our state tree. Planting these trees will not only improve the health of our shoreline here in St. Tammany, but it also will promote ecotourism in terms of green space and greenways. So it's a living memorial to those who died on 9/11."

The first wave of planting took place March 11 at Pottery Park near Monroe and Colbert streets in Mandeville.

Tanner Southam, a prospective Eagle Scout, helped coordinate the day's activities in order to earn his Eagle badge. About 40 volunteers gathered that morning, using dibblers and sharp shooter shovels to dig holes into which the young trees were placed.

About 500 seedlings (each about knee high) were planted, and over the years, they will grow into thick forests of cypress, which thrive in low-lying areas found in south Louisiana...