LOUISIANA, U.S.A.

A little History of Louisiana (aka The Pelican State, The Bayou State, Sportsman's Paradise, The Sugar State, The Creole State, or better known to me as HOME):

Louisiana is a southern state that lies on the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, an explorer, claimed the Mississippi Valley in 1682 and named it Louisiana in honor of Louis XIV of France.  The early French and Spanish settlers became known as Creoles. Thus, Louisiana is often called The Creole State.  Groups of Acadians settled in Louisiana after the late 1760s, after they were driven from their homes in Acadia (Nova Scotia). Acadians are often called Cajuns.  Baton Rouge is the capital, and New Orleans is the largest city.

Louisiana is also known as The Bayou State for it's hundreds of sluggish streams called bayous. They wind through the marshes and lowlands of the southern section.  Tangled marsh grasses and cypress trees draped with spanish moss grown between the bayous and lakes.  Eastern brown pelicans live throughout the bayou region, giving Louisiana yet another nickname, The Pelican State.  North of the coastal marshes, the land rises gently through green prairies and piney flatwoods to forest-clad hills in the north.

The busy waterway of the Mississippi River has made Louisiana an important trade center for hundreds of years.  Traders paddled canoes on the Mississippi in colonial days.  During the 1800s, river steamboats replaced the canoes; and today, powerful towboats push barges along the river. Ocean-going freighters and passengers ships, from all parts of the world, travel up the Mississippi to load and unload at New Orleans and Baton Rouge. New Orleans ranks among the highest US cities in the annual amount of cargo shipped through its port.

The state has rich natural resources.  Large crops of cotton, rice, and sweet potatoes come from its plantations and farms.  Louisiana won the nickname The Sugar State because it grows so much sugar cane. Lonely fur trappers of the swamps and woodlands gather more fur-bearing animals than those of any other state or Canadian province. Forest industries cut millions of dollars worth of  lumber and pulpwood from the forests that cover about half of the state. Louisiana fishermen catch the nation's largest haul of shrimp.  Vast supplies of petroleum formed the basis of a great industrial boom that began during WWII.

Louisiana's natural beauty and old world charm attract millions of tourists each year.  People from all parts of the US travel to New Orleans for the city's great carnival, Mardi Gras, in February or March. Tourists enjoy listening to New Orleans-style Jazz in cafes along Bourbon Street in the area that is often called the Cradle of Jazz. The stately plantation homes stand amid fields of cotton or sugar cane in several sections. Descendants of the Acadians still live in the bayou country.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow told of these people in his poem Evangeline; and people sometimes call the Bayou Teche area the Evangeline Country.

Many of the people have French ancestors; and the French language is still spoken in many regions today.  Louisiana is the only state that bases many of its laws on the Code Napoleon, the laws Napoleon Bonaparte introduced in France.  The units of local government in Louisiana are called parishes instead of counties.  The idea of parishes developed from the Roman Catholic Church districts organized by Spanish colonial governors.

Location and size: Louisiana covers 48,523 square miles at the southern end of the Mississippi Valley.  Texas borders Louisiana on the west, Arkansas forms the northern border, and Mississippi lies to the east.  The Gulf of Mexico forms the southern border.

Land regions:  Louisiana has three main land regions:  the East Gulf Coastal Plain, the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, and the West Gulf Coastal Plain.

Coastal line:  Louisiana has 397 miles of coast line along the Gulf of Mexico.  The coast of Louisiana is so ragged and irregular that a measurement including bays and inlets total 7,721 miles.  The western part of the coast only has a few inlets, but many large bays cut into the eastern stretch.  The chief bays include Atchafalaya, Barataria, Caillou, Cote Blanche, Terrebonne, Timbalier, and Vermillion.  Many islands lie off Louisiana's marshy coast.  The chief cones are Breton, Chandeleur, Grand Isle, Isle Derniere, Marsh, and Timbalier.

Rivers, bayous, and lakes:  Most of Louisiana was once part of an ancient bay of the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi and other rivers flowing down from the north deposited vast amounts of silt in the bay until the entire area became land.  Many of Louisiana's rivers today still carry great amounts of silt, especially during flood season. The silt has raised the level of many river beds, and some rivers are higher than the surrounding backlands.  About one third of Louisiana would be covered with water each time the Mississippi River flooded if it weren't for levees.  Levees stand along some 1600 miles of Louisiana's rivers. The Bonnet Carre Spillway and floodways built in the Atchafalaya Basin carry off high water when it pours over the levees. Louisiana has over 3400 square miles of lakes. Lake Pontchartrain, a salt-water lake covering 610 square miles, is the largest.  Other large coastal brackish or salt-water lakes are Barre, Borgne, Cailou, Calcasieu*, Grand (in Cameron Parish), Little Maurepas, and White Lakes.  Fresh-water lakes include Bistineau, Caddo, Catahoula, and Wallace.

Natural resources:  The fertile soil of Louisiana produces fine harvests of food crops.  Vast mineral deposits and timberlands supply many industries throughout the south. Wildlife in the fields, marshes, and the sea provide living for trappers and fishermen. Yet another nickname for Louisiana is The Sportsman's Paradise.

Food:  Southern Louisiana has a reputation for fine food.  Favorite soups include bisque, a thick soup made with shellfish; gumbo, a soup thickened with okra; and a kind of fish soup called bouillabaisse. Fish specialties include huitre en coquille a la Rockefeller (oysters baked on rock salt with a special spinach sauce) and pampano en papillote (pompano fish baked in a paper bag with shellfish sauce). The people sometimes add chicory when preparing their strong black coffee.  Pralines, made of pecans and brown sugar, are famous candies.

*Calcasieu River is located in Calcasieu Parish, the parish we live in. For a small history of Sulphur, Louisiana, our city, click here.

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****The above history was complied with the help of World Book Encyclopedia!****