Caroline Dormon

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Caroline Coroneos Dormon (July 19, 1888 - November 21, 1971) was a botanist, horticulturist, ornithologist, historian, archeologist, preservationist, naturalist, conservationist, and author from Louisiana. She was born in modest circumstances at Briarwood, the family home in northern Natchitoches Parish, to James L. Dormon and the former Caroline Trotti. She was reared in Arcadia, the seat of Bienville Parish, in northern Louisiana. She never married.

As a child, she developed a great interest in plants and wild life. She was educated at the Baptist-affiliated Judson College in Marion (Perry County), Alabama, from which she received a bachelor's degree in literature and art. She taught several years in Louisiana schools and then re-established her home at Briarwood in 1918. She began to collect and preserve native trees and shurbs. In 1921, she became a public relations representative for the Louisiana Forestry Department. She attended a Southern Forestry Congress in 1922 and persuaded the United States Forest Service to establish a national forest in Louisiana. U.S. Representative James B. Aswell of Natchitoches worked with Dormon to bring to fruition the Kisatchie National Forest, which was designated in 1930, during the administration of President Herbert C. Hoover.

In 1941, Dormon during the administration of Governor Sam Houston Jones, Dormon joined the Louisiana Highway Department (since the Department of Transportation and Development) as beautification consultant. She was thereafter a landscape consultant for the Huey P. Long Charity Hospital in Pineville in Rapides Parish east of the Red River from Alexandria.

She was also a consultant for the popular Hodges Gardens, Park, and Wilderness Area near Many, the seat of Sabine Parish. The private development opened in the 1950s, but it will come under the operation of the State of Louisiana in 2007.

Dormon also proposed what became the Louisiana State Arboretum, located some eight miles north of Ville Platte, the seat of Evangeline Parish, as part of nearby Chicot State Park. The 301-acre site was dedicated in 1964. The Caroline Dormon Lodge, which opened in 1965, serves as a visitor center, a library, and houses a herbarium of native plants which grow within the boundaries of the arboretum.

Her published works include the following: Wild Flowers of Louisiana (1934), Forest Trees of Louisiana (1941), Flowers Native to the Deep South (1958), Natives Preferred (1965), Southern Indian Boy (1967), and Bird Talk (1969).

Dormon was the only woman member of the De Soto Commission, which was established by Congress in 1935 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of De Soto's expedition across the American Southeast, which crossed northern Louisiana.

In 1965, Dormon was presented with an honorary doctor of science award from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The Dormon Collection is located at the Eugene P. Watson Memorial Library of Northwestern State University in Natchitoches.

Briarwood, located near Saline (Bienville Parish), is now the headquarters of the Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve. Natchitoches attorney and philanthropist Arthur C. Watson organized the Foundation for the Preservation of the Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve and served as its treasurer until his death in 1984. There is also a Caroline Dormon Trail extending 10.5 miles in the Kisatchie Bayou Recreation Complex within the national forest. It is popular for horseback riding, hiking, and bicycling. The trail starts at the Longleaf Scenic Byway.

Dormon is interred in the Briarwood Baptist Church Cemetery near her home.