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Antebellum Louisiana was a leading slave state, where by 1860, 47% of the population was enslaved. Louisiana seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861, joining the Confederate States of America. New Orleans, the largest city in the entire South at the time, and strategically important port city, was taken by Union troops on April 25, 1862.
- French Names For Louisiana Cities and Towns
- Louisiana Cities and Towns Named For People
- Cities and Towns in Louisiana Named For Other Places
- Indigenous Names For Louisiana Cities and Towns
- Louisiana Cities and Towns Named For Geographical Features
- Unique Backstories of Louisiana Towns and Cities
New Orleanswas founded in 1718 as Nouvelle-Orléans by the French explorer Bienville. He named the city in honor of another French official, then Prince Regent of France Philip II, Duke of Orleans. Louisiana’s capital city, Baton Rouge, means “red stick” in French. The red stick refers to a blood-stained pole that French explorer Iberville found on ...
Shreveport’sname is tied to a 160-mile log jam on the Red River in northwest and central Louisiana in the early 1800s. A steamboat captain and hundreds of men under his command successfully cleared the log jam opening river navigation southward to the Mississippi River. They established a port community north of the jam named for the jam-clearing c...
Located in Jefferson Davis Parish, Roanoke(as in American history’s “the lost colony of”) is said to have also been named by settlers who migrated from Virginia. Similarly, eastern Calcasieu Parish settlers named Iowaafter the northern Midwest state from which they migrated. Oddly enough, Louisiana’s Iowa has a long “a” (pronounced eye-way). Zwolle...
Several Louisiana cities owe their names to Louisiana’s first American Indian residents including Bayou Goula, Houma, Natchitoches, Opelousas, Coushatta, Jena and Ponchatoula. Bogalusais named for Washington Parish’s Bogue Lusa creek, which is Choctaw for “dark” or “smoky water.” Another town with a named tied to the Choctaw is Shongaloo, which is ...
Louisiana has places named for nearby natural resources, such as Louisiana’s Lake Charles, Lake Providence and Lake Arthur. Louisiana even has one central Louisiana 1800s sawmill town named for a defective natural resource. It’s said that a water wheel was built to power the mill, but the creek on which it sat would stop flowing and become a dry pr...
A then-new railroad depot in Avoyelles Parish was named Bunkieby a prominent landowner in the late 1800s. It is said the wealthy man’s young daughter had a pet monkey but her unpolished vocabulary skills resulted in her calling the pet “bunkie” instead of “monkey,” much to the amusement of the family. When the rail company asked the landowner to na...
Louisiana entrance sign off Interstate 20 in Madison Parish east of Tallulah. Louisiana[ pronunciation 1 ] (French: Louisiane [lwizjan] ⓘ; Spanish: Luisiana [lwiˈsjana]; Louisiana Creole: Lwizyàn) [ b ] is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and ...
Louisiana was named after Louis XIV, King of France from 1643 to 1715. When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River for France, he named it La Louisiane.
It is only in 1682 that the French took possession of what would become the huge Louisiana territory, over which their influence lasted for more than a century. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase Treaty between France and the United States ended for ever Colonial French Louisiana. Today, behind any existing names of French origins, historical traces ...
Mar 9, 2024 · What was Louisiana originally called? Louisiana was originally called “La Louisiane” by French explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, who claimed the territory for France in 1682. Why did the French own Louisiana? France acquired Louisiana from Spain in 1800 as part of Napoleon Bonaparte’s vision of a renewed French empire.
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While not every state can claim so specific an act—even a date, time, and person—responsible for its name, Louisiana can quite confidently claim La Salle’s act on the ninth of April in 1682 as the specific origin of its name. The intrepid explorer went on to describe the extent of the region he was claiming.
