Louisiana, LA

The State of Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. The capital of Louisiana is Baton Rouge and the most populous city is New Orleans.

The largest parish by population is Jefferson Parish and largest by area is Terrebonne Parish (Louisiana is the only state divided into parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties).

The New Orleans metropolitan area is Louisiana's largest. Louisiana has a unique multicultural and multilingual heritage. Originally part of New France, Louisiana is home to many speakers of Cajun French and Louisiana Creole French. African American/Franco-African, and French/French Canadian form the two largest groups of ancestry in Louisiana's population.

Namesake

Louisiana (New France) was named after Louis XIV, king of France from 1643-1715. When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River for France, he named it La Louisiane, meaning "Land of Louis".

Louisiana was once part of the Louisiana Territory which once stretched from present-day New Orleans to the Canadian border.

The territory was acquired in 1803 by the United States by way of the Louisiana Purchase. Part or all of 15 states were formed from the territory. An alternative explanation of the name is that Louisiana is a combination of Louis the XIV and his wife Anna of Austria.

This, however, is false. While his mother was Anne of Austria, Louis the XIV was married to Marie-Thérèse.

Geography

The state is bordered to the west by the state of Texas; to the north by Arkansas; to the east by the state of Mississippi; and to the south by the Gulf of Mexico.

The surface of the state may properly be divided into two parts, the uplands, and the alluvial, coast and swamp regions.

The alluvial regions, including the low swamps and coast lands, cover an area of about 20,000 square miles (52,000 km²); they lie principally along the Mississippi River, which traverses the state from north to south for a distance of about 600 miles (1,000 km) and ultimately emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, the Red River, the Ouachita River and its branches, and other minor streams.

The breadth of the alluvial region along the Mississippi is from 10 to 60 miles (15 to 100 km), and along the other streams it averages about 10 miles (15 km).

The Mississippi flows upon a ridge formed by its own deposits, from which the lands incline toward the low swamps beyond at an average fall of six feet per mile (3 m/km).

he alluvial lands along other streams present very similar features. These alluvial lands are never inundated, save when breaks occur in the levees by which they are protected against the floods of the Mississippi and its tributaries.

These floods, however, do not occur annually, and they may be said to be exceptional. With the maintenance of strong levees, these alluvial lands would enjoy perpetual immunity from inundation.

The higherlands and contiguous hill lands of the north and northwestern part of the state have an area of more than 25,000 square miles (65,000 km²), and they consist of prairie and woodlands.

The elevations above sea-level range from 10 feet (3 m) at the coast and swamp lands to 50 and 60 feet (15–18 m) at the prairie and alluvial lands. In the uplands and hills the elevations rise to Driskill Mountain the highest point in the state at only 535 feet (163 m) above sea level. Only two other states in the union, Florida and Delaware, are geographically lower than Louisiana, though several other states, such as Kansas and Nebraska, are geographically flatter.

Besides the navigable rivers already named (some of which are called bayous), there are the Sabine (Sah-BEAN), forming the western boundary, and the Pearl, the eastern boundary, the Calcasieu (KAL-cah-shoe), the Mermentau, the Vermilion, the Teche, the Atchafalaya, the Boeuf (buff), the Lafourche (Luff-OOSH), the Courtableau, the D'Arbonne, the Macon, the Tensas (TEN-saw), the Amite, the Tchefuncte, the Tickfaw, the Natalbany, and a number of other streams of lesser note, constituting a natural system of navigable waterways, aggregating over 4,000 miles in length, which is unequalled in the United States.

The state also has 1,060 square miles (2,745 km²) of land-locked bays, 1,700 square miles (4,400 km²) of inland lakes, and a river surface of over 500 square miles (1,300 km²).

Climate

Louisiana has a humid subtropical climate (Koppen climate classification Cfa), perhaps the most "classic" example of a humid subtropical climate of all the Southeastern states, with long, hot, humid summers and short, mild winters.

The subtropical characteristics of the state are due in large part to the influence of the Gulf of Mexico, which even at its farthest point is no more than 200 miles (320 km) away.

Precipitation is frequent throughout the year, although the summer is slightly wetter than the rest of the year, and there is a dip in precipitation in October, with Southern Louisiana receiving far more, copious rainfall, especially during the winter months.

Summers in Louisiana are hot and humid with high temperatures from mid-June to mid-September averaging 90°F (32°C) or more and overnight lows averaging above 70°F (22°C).

In northern Louisiana, temperatures frequently reach above 105°F (41°C) in the summer.

Temperatures are generally mildly warm in the winter in the southern part of the state, with highs around New Orleans, Baton Rouge, the rest of south Louisiana, and the Gulf of Mexico averaging 66°F (19°C), while the northern part of the state is mildly cool in the winter with highs averaging 59°F (15°C).

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Louisiana".