Louisiana

The land now called Louisiana and its Native tribes first encountered Europeans in 1519. Through the 1700s Native Americans remained the largest segment of Louisiana’s population.⁠[1][2]

Alonso Álvarez de Pineda reached the area in 1519 and Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1528; in 1541 Hernando de Soto’s expedition reached the Mississippi River.⁠[3]

In April 1682 René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, reached the mouth of the Mississippi River, claimed the surrounding lands for France and named the region “Louisiane” after King Louis XIV.⁠[1][2]

In 1699 Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, reached the mouth of the Mississippi on Shrove Tuesday and held a Mass and a Te Deum; he then established Fort Maurepas near present-day Biloxi, Mississippi, as his first permanent settlement in the Mississippi Valley, and traveled upriver as far as the future site of Baton Rouge.⁠[2][1]

Antoine Crozat was the colony’s first proprietor from 1712 to 1717; after Crozat gave it up in 1717 the crown granted the colony to John Law, who in 1719 created the Company of the Indies to govern Louisiana. Proprietary rule lasted until 1731, after which crown rule resumed.⁠[2]

In 1714 Louis Juchereau de St. Denis established the settlement of Natchitoches; Fort St. Jean Baptiste, built nearby, was the state’s first permanent settlement.⁠[1][3]

In 1718 Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, founded La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) about 100 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi, naming it for the Duc d’Orléans. France made New Orleans the capital of French Louisiana in 1722, and in 1723 Adrien de Pauger drew up the plan of what is now the French Quarter.⁠[2][1]

During the Natchez Massacre and War of 1729–1731, Natchez warriors attacked a French settlement, killing hundreds of white colonists and capturing nearly 300 enslaved Black people; the French governor responded with white and Black troops and allied Choctaw warriors, nearly destroying Natchez society.⁠[2]

New Orleans’ Ursuline Convent was first completed in 1734 and rebuilt in 1745; it is believed to be the oldest surviving French structure in the lower Mississippi Valley.⁠[2]

In 1762 France ceded the colony to Spain under the Treaty of Fontainebleau, and in 1763 Britain acquired France’s holdings east of the Mississippi under the Treaty of Paris. Spanish rule lasted from 1769 to 1803; in 1769 the Spanish provisional governor set up parishes as church units.⁠[3][2]

In 1779 Governor Bernardo de Gálvez defeated the British at Fort Richmond in Baton Rouge.⁠[3]

In 1800 Spain returned the west-bank lands to France under the Treaty of San Ildefonso. In 1803 Napoleon offered the Louisiana territory for $15 million; Thomas Jefferson had sought only New Orleans and access to the Gulf Coast. The French tricolor was raised on November 30, 1803, and the American flag was raised at the Cabildo on December 20.⁠[3][4]

In 1804 Congress created the Territory of Orleans, which included much of present-day Louisiana. By 1810 the territory had 77,000 people, and proposals for statehood were emerging.⁠[4][5]

In 1810 residents of West FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry revolted and formed the Republic of West Florida, raising its “Lone Star” banner on September 26; the republic dissolved that December. That year the United States seized West Florida amid the crisis of the Spanish empire.⁠[3][4]

In 1811 more than eighty enslaved people owned by Manuel Andry in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes launched a revolt along the German Coast; it was the largest single slave uprising in the United States, and it failed.⁠[4]

In 1812 Congress approved Louisiana statehood and President James Madison signed it; statehood came before the borders were finally settled, and the Florida Parishes, whose residents had rebelled against Spain, were included. The state adopted its first constitution that year. At statehood the population was about 80,000, including 35,000 enslaved people.⁠[4][5][6]

During the War of 1812 British troops invaded the Gulf Coast in 1814–1815. The Battle of New Orleans, the war’s final battle, was fought on January 8, 1815, and U.S. forces under Andrew Jackson defeated the British. New Orleans renamed its main square for Jackson in 1851 and erected a statue of him there in 1856.⁠[4][5][6]

The Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, also called the Transcontinental Treaty, finally established Louisiana’s eastern and western boundaries.⁠[4]

Apart from a single legislative session held in Donaldsonville in 1830, New Orleans served as the capital after statehood. The constitution of 1845 removed property qualifications for voting and holding office and required the capital to leave New Orleans; the legislature moved to Baton Rouge the following year. Another constitution followed in 1852.⁠[6]

Before the Civil War sugar dominated southern Louisiana and cotton the north, both cultivated mainly by enslaved people of African descent; New Orleans was a key Mississippi River port and the South’s largest interstate slave market. The New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad was founded in 1835.⁠[6][5]

In 1860 the state’s population was 708,002, including 331,726 enslaved people; in every antebellum census enslaved people made up at least 45 percent of the population. The free population of color peaked at 25,500 in 1840 and fell to 18,647 by 1860. In 1860 New Orleans had about 168,000 residents and Baton Rouge about 5,000.⁠[6]

In January 1861 a secession convention met in Baton Rouge and on January 26 voted 113 to 17 to secede; on March 21, 1861, Louisiana joined the Confederacy as one of its original seven states.⁠[6][3][5]

On May 1, 1862, Union forces under Gen. Benjamin F. Butler occupied New Orleans. The longest siege campaign of the Civil War took place at Port Hudson.⁠[5][3]

Reconstruction officially began in 1867, and a new constitution protected the political rights of African Americans; Louisiana was readmitted to the Union in 1868. P. B. S. Pinchback remains the state’s only African American governor. From 1868 to 1876 former Confederates used extralegal terror, including groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, against Republicans; in 1877 federal troops withdrew as part of the settlement of the disputed 1876 presidential election.⁠[5][3]

Agrarian protest in the 1880s and 1890s produced the Populist Party. A new constitution in 1898 disfranchised nearly all African Americans, and segregation followed.⁠[5]

The constitution of 1921 established the basis of the state’s present judicial system.⁠[3]

Congress recognized the Chitimacha as an Indian tribe in 1925; the Bureau of Indian Affairs administratively recognized the Coushatta in 1973, and the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe and the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians were recognized in 1981 and 1995. The legislature created a state office of Indian affairs in the 1970s, and the state recognizes several tribes, including the United Houma Nation. In 2020 the Census Bureau estimated that more than 32,000 Native Americans lived in Louisiana.⁠[7]

Huey P. Long was elected governor in 1928 and later U.S. senator. The new State Capitol, built in 14 months on a 27-acre tract, was completed in March 1932; at 450 feet and 34 floors, it is the tallest state capitol in the United States. Long was assassinated in the Capitol in September 1935.⁠[3][8]

In the 1930s and 1940s African Americans, led by a middle-class group in New Orleans, began challenging segregation mainly through the courts; in the 1960s Black Louisianans protested segregation more forcefully as part of the civil rights movement.⁠[8]

During and after World War II the state’s economic development centered on petrochemicals and, increasingly, offshore oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico; personal income rose after 1940. Since the 1970s the economy has often faltered with oil’s boom-and-bust cycles.⁠[8]

The present constitution, adopted in 1974, is the state’s 11th, more than any other state has had.⁠[9]

Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Buras in Plaquemines Parish as a Category 3 storm on August 29, 2005, and made a second landfall near the Louisiana–Mississippi border. Storm surge in southeast Louisiana reached 10 to 20 feet and overtopped the federal levee system in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, causing levee failures.⁠[10]

Levees along the 17th Street Canal, the Industrial Canal and the London Avenue Canal failed, leaving about 80 percent of New Orleans under water. An estimated 1.2 million people were evacuated; Louisiana’s recorded death toll stood at 1,464 a year after the storm and later rose to 1,577. The federal government allocated $71.5 billion to Louisiana for recovery and rebuilding, and by 2009 New Orleans had regained about 75 percent of its pre-storm population.⁠[11]

In April 2010 a deepwater oil rig about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of the Louisiana coast exploded, burned and collapsed, causing a spreading oil spill that threatened wildlife and fishing.⁠[8]

In the apportionment based on the 2020 census, Louisiana kept 6 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, unchanged from the previous apportionment, with an average of 776,911 people per seat. The state has 8 electoral votes for the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.⁠[12][13]

As of November 2026 the governor is Jeff Landry, who took office on January 8, 2024; he previously served as a U.S. congressman and as Louisiana Attorney General, and is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. Governors serve four-year terms and are limited to two consecutive terms.⁠[14][15][9]

The legislature consists of a 39-member Senate and a 105-member House of Representatives, both elected for four-year terms; regular sessions are held in even-numbered years and fiscal sessions in odd-numbered years. The Supreme Court has seven justices elected to ten-year terms. The state is divided into 64 parishes, which serve as county-level units of local government. Louisiana follows a civil law tradition; its colonial-era code was based on the Napoleonic Code of France and influenced by Spanish law.⁠[9][3]

The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 state area measurements give Louisiana a total area of 52,378 square miles (135,659 km²), of which 43,204 square miles (111,898 km²) are land and 9,174 square miles are water, comprising 4,562 square miles of inland water, 2,880 of coastal water and 1,732 of territorial water.⁠[16]

The state divides into the Mississippi River floodplain and delta and the low hills of the Gulf of Mexico coastal plain. The Mississippi River forms part of the eastern boundary and, after entering the state, creates the delta region; other major rivers include the Atchafalaya, Red and Pearl rivers. The terrain includes coastal marshes, alluvial plains and rolling pine hills.⁠[17][3]

New Orleans lies between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain and is a major deepwater port.⁠[18]

The highest point is Driskill Mountain in Bienville Parish, at 535 feet, and the lowest is in New Orleans, at 8 feet below sea level.⁠[19]

The U.S. Census Bureau estimated Louisiana’s population at 4,618,189 on July 1, 2025, down 0.9% from the April 1, 2020, estimates base of 4,657,894. Population density in 2020 was 107.8 people per square mile.⁠[20]

American Community Survey data for 2020–2024 show that 4.9% of residents were foreign-born, 27.0% of people aged 25 and over held a bachelor’s degree or higher, and median household income was $60,756 in 2024 dollars.⁠[20]

Preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis put Louisiana’s 2024 nominal GDP at $327.782 billion ($327,782 million); real GDP grew 3.1% from the previous year, ranking 15th among the states and the District of Columbia.⁠[21]

Petroleum and natural gas are the state’s chief mineral resources; soybeans are a major crop, and tree farming and shrimp fishing are also important. A large timber industry developed in the late 19th century and remained a major industry into the 21st century.⁠[17][8]

Louisiana State University, founded in 1853, is the keystone of the state’s higher education; Southern University, founded in 1880, is a public historically Black institution; and Tulane University in New Orleans, founded in 1834, is private.⁠[9]

Louisiana’s nicknames are “The Pelican State” and “Sportsman’s Paradise,” and its motto is “Union, Justice, Confidence.”⁠[3]

The state flag has a dark blue field with a crest showing a mother pelican, head turned to the viewer’s right, with three drops of blood on her breast above a nest with three chicks, and the motto on a white banner below; the flag’s proportions are 7 by 11. The flag was adopted on July 1, 1912, when the law specified only a white pelican feeding its young and a white ribbon with the motto in blue; in 2005 the legislature passed a resolution calling for an appropriate display of three drops of blood, and in 2010 Curtis J. Vann Jr.’s design became the official flag. The state seal uses the same crest within a circle, with “State of Louisiana” on the upper part of the outer ring; the present seal was set in 1902 under Governor William Henry Wright Heard. After statehood William C. C. Claiborne replaced the bald eagle on the earlier seal with a pelican.⁠[22][3][23]

The state bird is the brown pelican (the pelican was named in 1958 and the brown pelican specified in 1966), the state flower the magnolia (1900), the state tree the bald cypress (1963) and the state fruit the strawberry (2001); the state dog is the Catahoula leopard dog and the state crustacean the crawfish. State songs include “Give Me Louisiana” and “You Are My Sunshine.”⁠[3][23][24]

State of Louisiana: Official website: https://louisiana.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[25]

Office of Governor Jeff Landry: Official website: https://gov.louisiana.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[15]

Louisiana State Legislature: Official website: https://legis.la.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[26][25]

Louisiana Secretary of State: Official website: https://www.sos.la.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[22]

Louisiana State Museum: Official website: https://louisianastatemuseum.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]