This small town of 12,000 has one of the only downtown districts in Louisiana to keep hold of its original brick-paved Main Street. Minden has many more surprising historical details, like the preserved vestiges of a 19th-century Utopian colony at Germantown, and a refined residential district designed on a parallelogram by the German founder, Charles …
A city steeped in Creole heritage, Opelousas is known as the “Zydeco capital of the world”, with an annual music festival celebrating this traditional music style, led by accordion and rubboard. As the third-oldest city in the state, Opelousas can trace its history back far into the 18th century, and celebrated its tricentennial in 2020. …
Settled by Acadians in the 19th century, Abbeville is a pretty town on the Vermilion River, with landmarks traced by historic live oaks. Abbeville is in the middle of the Cajun Corridor byway, and you can stop at museums celebrating Cajun culture and recalling the deportation of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in the mid-18th …
Just east of the Mississippi riverbank, Zachary is a comfortable and green northern suburb of Baton Rouge. The suburban tranquility in Zachary conceals a tumultuous past, as the longest siege in U.S. military history took place just to the west in 1863. The setting for the bloody Siege of Port Hudson is now a state …
The largest city in Northeast Louisiana is on the west bank of the Ouachita River, facing off against its neighbor West Monroe. Monroe is named after a paddle wheeler, the James Monroe, that made a trailblazing voyage up the Ouachita River from the Mississippi, landing here in 1819. The city is a cultural mecca for …
The largest city in Southwest Louisiana, Lake Charles is at the head of a string of lakes on the course of the Calcasieu River before it flows into the Gulf Coast. Sitting at the waterfront in Lake Charles, it’s easy to imagine the schooners that helped bring commerce to the region via Texan and Mexican …
Encompassing New Orleans International Airport, Kenner is the largest incorporated suburban city of New Orleans, and the source of European settlement in the New Orleans area. It was here in 1682 that the explorer and fur trader, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643-1687) became the first European to set foot on what would become …
Often hailed as one of the best food towns in the country, Lafayette is a city in the center of Southwest Louisiana’s Cajun and Creole Country. The city was founded more than 200 years ago beside Bayou Vermilion, a slow-moving tidal river just west of the Atchafalaya Basin, which is home to the largest swamp …
Sitting on the Red River opposite its sister city, Shreveport, Bossier City is a community of more than 60,000. Combined with its neighbor, this is a gaming hub for the Ark-La-Tex region, with huge, Vegas-style casino resorts lining both banks of the river, interspersed with malls and top-notch family attractions. Income from gaming has financed …
A regional hub for culture, education and commerce in Central Louisiana, Alexandria combines many of the things that people associate with southern parts of the state. One of these is a thriving Mardi Gras culture, with upwards of 20 krewes parading through the city on the Sunday before Fat Tuesday. The city sits across the …