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Lafayette (/ ˌ l æ f i ˈ ɛ t, ˌ l ɑː f-/ LA(H)-F-ee-ET, French:) is the most populous city in and parish seat of Lafayette Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana, [3] located along the Vermilion River. It is Louisiana's fourth-most populous city with a 2020 census population of 121,374; [4] the consolidated city-parish's population was ...
- Overview
- Relief
- Drainage
- Soils
Louisiana, constituent state of the United States of America. It is delineated from its neighbours—Arkansas to the north, Mississippi to the east, and Texas to the west—by both natural and man-made boundaries. The Gulf of Mexico lies to the south. The total area of Louisiana includes about 4,600 square miles (12,000 square km) of inland waters. The capital is Baton Rouge.
Admitted to the union in 1812 as the 18th state, Louisiana commands a once strategically vital region where the waters of the great Mississippi-Missouri river system, draining the continental interior of North America, flow out into the warm, northward-curving crescent of the Gulf of Mexico. It is not surprising that seven flags have flown over its territories since 1682, when the explorer René-Robert Cavelier, sieur (lord) de La Salle, placed a wooden cross in the ground and claimed the territory in the name of France’s Louis XIV. The consequent varieties of cultural heritage run like bright threads through many facets of the social, political, and artistic life of the state.
With parts of its land lying farther south than any portion of the continental United States except southern Texas and the Florida peninsula, and with New Orleans, its largest city, lying on roughly the same parallel as Cairo, New Delhi, and Shanghai, Louisiana owes much of its complex personality to its geographic position. The subtropical climate of the state has provided the magnificent brooding scenery of the coastal bayous, and the lush, dank vegetation of its shores conceals a wealth of petroleum and natural gas. The fertile soil covering much of the terrain made Louisiana a rich agricultural area by 1860, with flourishing sugarcane and cotton plantations. A lumber boom occurred at the turn of the 20th century, and Louisiana underwent rapid industrialization after World War II. Mineral output is great, and the state ranks among the country’s leaders in oil and gas production.
But progress has not been without its tragic and turbulent aspects: bitter territorial disputes and violent internal struggles for political power impeded the social and economic development of the state and crippled many of its political institutions. The wealth of the plantations was accumulated through the extensive use of slaves, whose descendants comprise nearly one-third of Louisiana’s population and whose culture has contributed much to the social fabric of the state. Racial conflict marked the development of the state from the American Civil War period (1861–65) and Reconstruction (1865–77) through the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. The guarantee of suffrage (through the Voting Rights Act [1965]) and ever-increasing African American political involvement, however, have helped move the state toward being a more racially egalitarian society.
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Three types of regions are found in Louisiana: lowlands, terraces, and hills. The lowlands consist of the coastal marshes and the Mississippi floodplain, with its natural levees and moderate relief. The Red River valley has a low-elevation relief, with red soils in its alluvial plain and many raft lakes built by impounding water from logjams. The terraces include much of the so-called Florida Parishes to the north and northeast of the Mississippi delta, as well as the prairies of southwestern Louisiana. Hills flank the Red River valley and lend contour to the northern portion of the Florida Parishes; the state’s highest point is Driskill Mountain (535 feet [163 metres]), in northwestern Louisiana.
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Louisiana shares the general physiographic characteristics common to the Gulf Coast states of the southern United States, with the vital exception of the Mississippi River, which borders and then flows through the state and extends its delta far into the Gulf of Mexico. The changing course of this great North American river has created the huge Atc...
The soils of Louisiana have been one of the state’s priceless resources; more than one-fourth of the total land area is covered by the rich alluvium deposited by the overflowing of its rivers and bayous. Muck and peat soils are found within the coastal marshes, while the bottoms hold rich alluvial soils: the lighter and coarser bottom soils of the ...
The U.S. would divide that area into two territories, the Territory of Orleans, which formed what would become the boundaries of Louisiana, and the District of Louisiana. Louisiana was admitted as the 18th state of the United States on April 30, 1812.
- France and the Founding of New Orleans. The first known residents of the New Orleans area were the Native Americans of the Woodland and Mississippian cultures.
- New Orleans Under Spanish Rule and the Louisiana Purchase. In 1762 and 1763 France signed treaties ceding Louisiana to Spain. For 40 years New Orleans was a Spanish city, trading heavily with Cuba and Mexico and adopting the Spanish racial rules that allowed for a class of free people of color.
- New Orleans in the 1800s. During the first half of the 19th century, New Orleans became the United States’ wealthiest and third-largest city. Its port shipped the produce of much of the nation’s interior to the Caribbean, South America and Europe.
- New Orleans in the 20th Century. By 1900, the city’s streetcars were electrified, and New Orleans jazz was born in its clubs and dance halls. The city grew.
- Louisiana Native American History. When the first French colonists arrived in the area now known as Louisiana in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the land had already been settled for more than 10,000 years by Native Americans.
- Louisiana Exploration and Colonial History. Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto was the first European to visit Louisiana during his 1541 expedition down the Mississippi River.
- The Louisiana Purchase and Statehood. The Louisiana Purchase was the conclusion of a decades-long struggle between France, England and Spain for control over North American territory—particularly around the Mississippi River, which enabled trade throughout much of the continent.
- Slavery. Slaves have been a part of Louisiana’s history since the French colony was established. Given its location at the mouth of the Mississippi River, New Orleans eventually became the largest and most significant slave-trading center in the United States during the 19th century.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Louisiana became an independent republic for six weeks before joining the Confederacy. Earlier, in 1803, Louisiana had become a part of the United States because of the region's importance to the trade and security of the American mid-west.
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6 days ago · Its strategic position, commanding the mouth of the great Mississippi-Missouri river system, which drains the rich interior of North America, made it a pawn in the struggles of Europeans for the control of North America.
