Archaeology
Tchefuncte Culture
Tchefuncte culture flourished in Louisiana during the Early Woodland Period from 800 BCE to 1 CE.
Archaeology
Archaeology Index
Archaeology
Mississippian Culture
The Mississippian culture spanned from roughly 1050 to 1700 CE
Archaeology
Evans Culture
This entry covers the prehistoric Evans culture during the Middle Archaic Period, 6000–2000 BCE.
Archaeology
Troyville Culture
Dating to the Late Woodland Period, from 400 to 700 CE, the Troyville Culture is named for an archaeological site in Catahoula Parish.
Architecture
Architecture IndexArchitecture
St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, Plaquemines
St. John the Evangelist Church in Plaquemine, Louisiana, was modeled on Early Christian and Romanesque churches of Italy.
Architecture
Laurel Valley Plantation
In the early twentieth century, Thibodaux's Laurel Valley Plantation was the largest sugar producer in the region and employed as many as 450 workers.
Architecture
Louisiana State University Rural Life Museum
The LSU Rural Life Museum is an outdoor complex of southern rural vernacular buildings located in Baton Rouge.
Architecture
Highland Plantation
The Barrow family built Highland Plantation in antebellum St. Francisville, Louisiana.
Art
Art IndexArt
Lin Emery
Louisiana artist Lin Emery was best known for her polished aluminum kinetic sculptures in public spaces and collections around the world.
Art
George Ralston Crawford
Though he never lived in Louisiana on a permanent basis, twentieth-century painter and photographer Ralston Crawford visited New Orleans frequently and featured the city in much of his work.
Art
Jacques Amans
French artist Jacques Amans was the leading portraitist in New Orleans during the 1840s and 1850s.
Art
Jacqueline Humphries
The daughter of New Orleans jewelry designer Mignon Faget, Jacqueline Humphries has forged her own internationally recognized career as a painter in New York City.
Business & Industry
Business & Industry IndexBusiness & Industry
Oil and Gas Industry in Louisiana
The oil and gas industry has been a dominant economic engine in Louisiana for well over a century.
Business & Industry
First Louisiana Oil Well
Exploitable petroleum deposits were found in Louisiana in 1901, changing the state's economy and landscape forever.
Business & Industry
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
One of the worst environmental disasters in US history
Business & Industry
The Shreve Town Company
The Shreve Town Company was a for-profit business venture that led to the establishment of what is today known as Shreveport, the largest city in northwest Louisiana.
Disasters
Disasters IndexDisasters
Great Flood of 1927
The Flood of 1927 inundated nearly 26,000 square miles in 170 counties in seven states, driving an estimated 931,159 people from their homes.
Disasters
Grand 16 Theater Shooting
The Grand 16 Theater Shooting was a 2015 mass shooting in Lafayette that left three dead and injured nine, catapulting the city into a national discussion about gun control.
Disasters
Westwego Continental Grain Elevator Explosion
The Westwego explosion ranks among the worst industrial disasters in modern Louisiana history and the deadliest disaster to date in the nation’s grain industry.
Disasters
Steamboat Princess Disaster
On February 27, 1859, the Steamboat Princess exploded on the Mississippi River killing between 70 and 200 passengers and crew.
Folklife
Folklife IndexFolklife
Lagniappe
"Lagniappe" is a vernacular word used in New Orleans to refer to a complimentary giveaway in a retail environment.
Folklife
Voudou
Voudou, a synthesis of African religious and magical beliefs with Roman Catholicism, emerged in New Orleans in the 1700s and survives in active congregations today.
Folklife
Campeche Chair
The Campeche chair, a leather or caned sling seat supported by a non-folding cross-frame, was in widespread use in the United States and New Spain in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Folklife
Baby Dolls
The Baby Dolls were one of the first women's street masking groups in the United States. The practice continues today as a living legacy.
Foodways
Foodways IndexFoodways
Avery Island
Located in Iberia Parish, Avery Island, the largest of five salt domes along the Louisiana coast, is the home of the McIlhenny Company, maker of Tabasco brand products for more than 140 years.
Foodways
Gumbo
Gumbo is a thick soup that can be considered the signature dish of south Louisiana.
Foodways
Tabasco Sauce
Tabasco is a popular brand of pepper sauce products and related items manufactured by McIlhenny Company, a privately held, family-owned business headquartered on Avery Island, Louisiana.
Foodways
Po-Boy Sandwich
The so-called poor boy (po-boy) sandwich originated from the Martin Brothers' French Market Restaurant and Coffee Stand in New Orleans during the 1929 streetcar strike.
Geography
Geography IndexGeography
Fontainebleau State Park
The Fontainebleau State Park bears the name of Bernard de Marigny's sugar plantation, which formerly occupied this site and was itself named after the estate of the French king Francois I.
Geography
Neutral Strip
The Neutral Strip existed outside the governance of either the United States or Spain until 1821.
Geography
Bourbon Street
The origins of the notorious adult playground
Geography
Mandeville
Mandeville was founded in 1834, occupying part of what was formerly the sugar plantation of Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville in Louisiana.
Government, Politics & Law
Government, Politics & Law IndexGovernment, Politics & Law
Oliver O. Provosty
Oliver O. Provosty served as the chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1922.
Government, Politics & Law
George Mathews
George Mathews served as the presiding judge of the Supreme Court of Louisiana from 1813 to 1836.
Government, Politics & Law
Napoleonic Code
The French Civil Code of 1804 standardized civil law in France, becoming a model legal framework for jurisdictions around the world, including Louisiana.
Government, Politics & Law
John T. Ludeling
John T. Ludeling served as the chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from 1868 to 1877.
History
History IndexHistory
Kathleen Blanco
Kathleen Blanco, Louisiana's first woman governor, served during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Blanco faced extreme criticism of her handling of the disaster.
History
St. Francis Chapel of Point Coupee
The original St. Francis Chapel of Point Coupee, was one of the first parish churches in Louisiana.
History
Cosimo Matassa
Italian-American businessman, studio owner, and recording engineer Cosimo Matassa is one of the seminal figures of popular recorded music.
History
Norbert Rillieux
Norbert Rillieux, a Creole from New Orleans, was an inventor and engineer who designed the multiple-effect evaporation system, a major advancement in the process of sugar refining.
Literature
Literature IndexLiterature
Creole Literature
Few other movements in the American literary scene evoke exotic images rivaling those conjured by Louisiana's Creole writers.
Literature
Southwestern Humor
Southwestern humor is a literary genre that flourished in the southeastern United States between 1830 and 1865.
Literature
Julie Kane
Boston-born Julie Kane was appointed the 2011-2013 Louisiana Poet Laureate.
Literature
Tony Kushner
Playwright Tony Kushner, one-time resident of Lake Charles, is the author of prizewinning drama "Angels in America."
Music
Music IndexMusic
Inez Catalon
Inez Catalon was a Louisiana folk singer who specialized in cantiques, a type of French folk song.
Music
Paul Emile Johns
Paul Emile Johns is credited with the first performance of a Beethoven piano concerto, in New Orleans in 1819.
Music
Emanuel Paul
Emanuel Paul was a traditional jazz and brass band saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist from New Orleans.
Music
Marie Théard
Marie Théard (Moses) achieved distinction as a pianist, piano teacher, collector, arranger, and translator of French and French Creole Patois songs of Louisiana.
Peoples of Louisiana
Peoples of Louisiana IndexPeoples of Louisiana
Natchez Indians
The Natchez are an American Indian group that lived along the Lower Mississippi River during the rise of European colonialism.
Peoples of Louisiana
Isleños
Louisiana's Isleños descend from Canary Islanders who immigrated to the southeastern part of the state in the late 1700s, when Spain ruled the colony.
Peoples of Louisiana
Cajuns
Cajuns are the descendants of Acadian exiles from what are now the maritime provinces of Canada–Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island–who migrated to southern Louisiana.
Peoples of Louisiana
Quapaw Tribe
The Quapaw Indians, whose four villages were located along the Arkansas River, were military allies and trade partners of colonial Louisianans.
Religion & Spirituality
Religion & Spirituality IndexReligion & Spirituality
Marie Laveau
Marie Laveau was a free woman of color born in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Laveau assumed the leadership role of a multiracial religious community for which she gave consultations and held ceremonies. During her time, she was known as "The Priestess of the Voudous"; among many other colorful titles.
Religion & Spirituality
Ascension of Our Lord Catholic Church Cemetery
This Catholic cemetery in Donaldsonville was laid out in a grid plan shortly after the church parish was founded in 1772.
Religion & Spirituality
Marie Tranchepain
Marie Tranchepain was the first Mother Superior of New Orleans’s Ursulines and an early female diarist.
Religion & Spirituality
Mother Mary Hyacinth
Mother Mary Hyacinth led nine Daughters of the Cross from France to central Louisiana in 1855 to open a convent and several schools.
Sports & Recreation
Sports & Recreation IndexSports & Recreation
New Orleans Saints
When it was aired, the New Orleans Saints Super Bowl victory in 2010 was the most-watched television broadcast in history, drawing more than 153 million viewers.
Sports & Recreation
Howie Pollet
Howie Pollet was one of three left-handed pitchers from the same New Orleans block to make it to baseball's major leagues.
Sports & Recreation
Jimmy Perrin
Jimmy Perrin made his professional boxing debut in 1933 against Tony Feraci at the Coliseum Arena in New Orleans.
Sports & Recreation
Bill Dickey
Baseball great William Malcolm "Bill" Dickey, a native of Bastrop, was a Hall of Fame catcher for the New York Yankees.
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