La Belle Odyssey
One part of the larger La Salle Odyssey.
It takes more than one museum to tell the complex and compelling stories of La Salle, La Belle, and the short-lived French settlement of Fort St. Louis, near Matagorda Bay.
The Bullock Museum exhibition, La Belle: The Ship That Changed History, is one part of a larger exhibition, La Salle Odyssey, that is spread across seven museums along the Texas Gulf Coast. Each museum exhibition tells a chapter of the saga: King Louis XIV's ambition to expand the French empire to North America, La Salle's disaster-filled effort to do that, the tragic demise and abandonment of the Fort St. Louis colony, and the discovery and unprecedented excavation of the 300-year-old wreckage of La Salle's ship, La Belle.
Experience the whole La Salle Odyssey while enjoying a wonderful trip along the Texas coast. Visit the map or the links below to learn about each Odyssey Museum and what chapter of this history-changing story is told there.
La Belle: The Ship That Changed History is organized by the Bullock Texas State History Museum with the Texas Historical Commission, the Musée National de la Marine, and Texas A&M University. Support is provided by the State of Texas, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the Texas State History Museum Foundation.
Banner image courtesy Texas Historical Commission
