50 Fun Facts About Louisiana

What is the capital of Louisiana?

The city sits on the first natural bluff upriver from the Mississippi delta, which kept its business district safe from seasonal floods.

Louisiana is the only U.S. state whose county-equivalent subdivisions are called what?

The term comes from the French paroisse and dates to the colonial church-parish boundaries; Alaska, with its boroughs, is the only other state without counties.

Louisiana was named in honor of which French king?

The explorer La Salle named the Mississippi drainage 'La Louisiane' in 1682; the -ana suffix roughly means 'relating to Louis'.

In what year did the United States buy the Louisiana Territory from France?

Napoleon sold the territory after his army failed to retake Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and he abandoned plans for a Caribbean sugar empire.

Which U.S. president oversaw the Louisiana Purchase?

Jefferson only sent envoys to buy the port of New Orleans; the French offer of the entire territory caught him by surprise.

Louisiana joined the Union in 1812 as which state, in order of admission?

It was the first state carved out of the Louisiana Purchase lands, entering less than a decade after the sale.

Which European power governed Louisiana from 1762 until it was secretly handed back to France in 1800?

The Spanish era brought the French refugees who became the Cajuns and the Canary Islander settlers known as Isleños.

Roughly what share of New Orleans was left underwater by Hurricane Katrina in 2005?

Investigators blamed the worst of the flooding on engineering flaws in the federally built levees and floodwalls, not on the storm alone.

Which team did the New Orleans Saints beat in Super Bowl XLIV to win their first championship?

The 31-17 win in February 2010 was the first major professional sports title ever won by a New Orleans team.

Which LSU quarterback won the Heisman Trophy in 2019?

He was the second of LSU's three Heisman winners, bookended by Billy Cannon in 1959 and Jayden Daniels in 2023.

The French name of Louisiana's capital city literally translates to what?

In 1699 d'Iberville's expedition saw a red pole marking the hunting boundary between the Houma and Bayagoula peoples.

New Orleans' international airport was renamed in 2001 for the centennial of which musician's birth?

A statue of the trumpeter greets travelers at the entrance to the airport's former terminal building.

Which stew's New Orleans variation is Louisiana's official state cuisine?

It got a national boost when the U.S. Senate dining room put it on the menu to honor Louisiana senator Allen Ellender.

Louisiana produces roughly 90% of the world's supply of which food?

The Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival each spring has been named one of the top food events in the country by USA Today.

Cajuns descend from French colonists the British expelled in the 1750s from which region?

Most Cajun families trace back to roughly 50 households living at Port Royal, now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, in 1671.

What was populist governor and senator Huey Long's famous nickname?

Long built the nation's tallest capitol and a modern highway system, and was poised for a 1936 presidential run when he was assassinated.

How strong was Hurricane Katrina by the time it made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2005?

It had peaked as a Category 5 with 175 mph winds over the Gulf the day before, but the levee failures made the weaker landfall catastrophic anyway.

Which city, founded in 1714, is the oldest permanent European settlement in Louisiana?

It was set up to trade with the Spanish in Texas and to block their advance; its sister city across the border is Nacogdoches.

Driskill Mountain, Louisiana's highest natural point, rises to roughly what elevation?

Only Florida and Delaware have lower high points; a pile of rocks marks the summit in Bienville Parish.

How many county-equivalent subdivisions is Louisiana divided into?

Most are governed by an elected Police Jury, a colonial-era body whose members are called jurors.

Roughly how long is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest continuous bridge over water?

Guinness split its record into two categories in 2011 after China's Jiaozhou Bay Bridge opened, keeping the Causeway as the 'continuous' champion.

Unlike the other 49 states, Louisiana's private law is rooted in which legal tradition?

Despite the popular claim, the Napoleonic Code was never in force there: it was enacted in 1804, a year after the U.S. bought the territory.

By what name is the Louisiana State Penitentiary, America's largest maximum-security prison, known?

The name comes from the antebellum Angola plantation on the site, once owned by the slave trader Isaac Franklin; inmates still farm its 28 square miles.

Poverty Point, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northeastern Louisiana, is what kind of place?

Its mounds and ridges were built by hunter-gatherers whose culture peaked around 1500 BC, long before farming reached the region.

Which outlaw duo was ambushed and killed by a posse near Gibsland, Bienville Parish, in May 1934?

The six-man posse mixed former Texas Rangers, Dallas deputies and the local Bienville Parish sheriff, and the groups barely trusted each other.

Which Shreveport radio show gave early exposure to Hank Williams and a young Elvis Presley?

Presley's first appearance on the show in October 1954 got a tepid response, but he was still signed to a year's contract.

Who was the first woman ever elected governor of Louisiana?

Her single term (2004-2008) was defined by Hurricane Katrina; she chose not to seek re-election.

Whom did Edwin Edwards face in the 1991 runoff remembered for 'Vote for the Crook' stickers?

Even President George H. W. Bush endorsed the Democrat Edwards over the former Klan leader; Edwards later served eight years in federal prison for racketeering.

Some researchers estimate that coastal Louisiana loses land equal to how many football fields every day?

Levees that block sediment, logging canals and oil-industry channels all let salt water eat inland; the state lost about 1,800 square miles between 1932 and 2010.

The Battle of New Orleans was fought 15 days after which peace treaty ending the War of 1812 was signed?

News of the peace had not yet crossed the Atlantic; Andrew Jackson's outnumbered force routed the British assault in about half an hour.

Founder Al Copeland said Popeyes was named not for the sailor but for a detective in which 1971 film?

The chain opened in Arabi, a New Orleans suburb, in 1972 as 'Chicken on the Run' and flopped before relaunching days later under the new name.

What was the 1724 French law regulating slavery in colonial Louisiana called?

Some of its provisions, such as the ban on cruel punishments, survived in Louisiana law even after the territory became American.

Avery Island, home of the McIlhenny Company's famous hot sauce, is actually what geological feature?

Native Americans boiled the island's briny springs for salt and traded it as far as Ohio; salt domes also trap oil and gas underground.

After joining the NFL in 1967, how many years did the Saints wait for a first winning season?

It then took another 13 years for a first playoff win, in 2000 over the defending champion St. Louis Rams.

Before its famous nickname stuck, LSU's Tiger Stadium had an earlier one about the crowd noise. What was it?

The stadium holds more than 102,000 people, making it the sixth-largest college football venue in the country.

Shreveport is named for Captain Henry Miller Shreve, who opened the Red River by clearing what?

Shreve used a specially modified riverboat, the Heliopolis, to break up the natural obstruction known as the Great Raft.

In 1997 Louisiana became the first state to offer what stricter kind of marriage, with no-fault divorce waived?

Couples who choose it give up no-fault divorce after six months' separation and must show cause to split.

The world's second-lowest international airport is in New Orleans. Roughly what is its elevation?

It closed ahead of Katrina but never flooded, and reopened to rescue flights the day after landfall.

The Old River Control Structure keeps the Mississippi River from changing course into which river?

The Army Corps floodgates were finished in 1963; the 1973 flood damaged the main structure so badly that an auxiliary one had to be built.

In what year did Louisiana finally ratify the Nineteenth Amendment?

The amendment had already been federal law for half a century; the ratification was symbolic.

When Louisiana became a state in 1812, the remaining Louisiana Territory was renamed after which future state?

The two territories had been split along the 33rd parallel in 1804, which is still Louisiana's northern border.

When Louisiana's capital left New Orleans in 1849, which institution stayed and is still headquartered there?

Donaldsonville, Opelousas and Shreveport have each briefly served as the seat of state government.

A 2006 law requiring 'three drops of blood' on the flag's pelican followed whose complaint?

The student in Houma noticed the traditional drops had been left off haphazardly and told his legislator; a standardized redesign followed in 2010.

The State Capitol that Huey Long built, still the tallest in the nation, rises how many stories?

Long insisted on a skyscraper rather than a traditional dome, and it was inside this building that he was shot in 1935.

In LSU's 1958 national-title season, coach Paul Dietzel's 'Chinese Bandits' were which unit?

Dietzel's three-platoon system swapped whole units between series: the White Team, the Gold (Go) Team and the Bandits.

Lafayette, the hub of Cajun country, was originally founded in the 1820s under what name?

It took its first name from the Vermilion River; the switch honored the Marquis de Lafayette.

Louisiana had the country's first Black governors, during Reconstruction. Which man was one of them?

Some 125 Black members were elected to the state legislature in the same era, before the 1898 constitution disenfranchised almost all Black voters.

One theory traces 'zydeco' to a Louisiana French phrase saying which food 'aren't salted'?

The phrase was an idiom for hard times; a rival theory points to West African words for dancing and music-making.

Saint Malo, Louisiana, the oldest Asian settlement in the US, was founded by men who escaped ships from where?

The 'Manila men' had fled Spanish galleons; their descendants fought alongside Jean Lafitte's forces in the War of 1812.

About how many miles offshore does Louisiana's Gulf jurisdiction extend, versus 9 for Texas and Florida?

The quirk of political geography leaves Louisiana with a third of the offshore zone its Gulf neighbors control.