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Shady Belle 1899

Shady Belle was a large colonial mansion located in Bayou Nwa south of Esther and east of Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana. It was surrounded by swamps and alligator-infested waters to the east, and it was abandoned after the American Civil War and became decrepit, becoming overgrown with vines. During the late 19th century, several gangs used the abandoned mansion as a base of operations, including the Louisiana Raiders and the Van der Linde Gang. Dutch van der Linde and his gang members cleared the mansion of Raiders after two shootouts (the first being a raid by Arthur Morgan and Lenny Summers, the second being a takeover from Levi Sinclair's holdouts) in 1899, but the gang was later forced to flee north due to increasing law enforcement attention, and the Raiders returned to using the mansion as a base.

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