Commercial center for the surrounding cotton plantation country in antebellum days, St. Francisville today has a quaint and charming downtown area listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings. Its unique mixture of commercial and residential 19th-century structures assures present-day viability; this historic downtown is very much alive, with small restaurants and shops interspersed with occupied wellkept homes dripping with Victorian trim. There is only one main street of town, and it runs right into the Mississippi River where a ferry transports passengers across. Within a few miles are seven antebellum plantation homes and gardens open daily for tours, as well as the scenic unspoiled recreation areas of the Tunica Hills and Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge.