Louisiana State Map

Regions of Louisiana

Louisiana is roughly boot-shaped: a tall block in the north and a “sole” of marsh and bayou along the Gulf. Nearly all of the state lies on low coastal plain, and parts of New Orleans sit below sea level behind levees.

• North Louisiana: pine-covered hills and farmland around Shreveport, Bossier City, Ruston and Monroe. Driskill Mountain, the state’s highest point, rises near Arcadia in Bienville Parish.
• Central Louisiana: Alexandria and Natchitoches on the Red River, with Kisatchie National Forest, the only national forest in the state. Natchitoches, founded in 1714, is the oldest permanent European settlement in the Louisiana Purchase territory.
• Acadiana: the French-speaking Cajun heartland of south-central and southwest Louisiana, centered on Lafayette and reaching west to Lake Charles and the Texas line.
• Capital region: Baton Rouge and the surrounding parishes along the Mississippi River, lined with petrochemical plants and former sugar plantations.
• Florida Parishes: the eight parishes east of the Mississippi and north of Lake Pontchartrain, including Hammond, Covington and Slidell. They were part of Spanish West Florida until 1810.
• Greater New Orleans: Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and the river parishes, wedged between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi.
• Coastal Louisiana: Houma, Morgan City, Grand Isle and Plaquemines Parish, a maze of wetlands, barrier islands and bayous that is losing land to erosion and subsidence.

Rivers, lakes and wetlands

The Mississippi River forms part of the border with Mississippi, then cuts across the southeast past Baton Rouge and New Orleans to its delta in Plaquemines Parish. The Atchafalaya River carries part of the Mississippi’s flow south through the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest river swamp in the United States. The Red River flows southeast from Shreveport to Alexandria, and the Sabine River, dammed to form Toledo Bend Reservoir, marks much of the Texas border. The Pearl River forms the lower boundary with Mississippi.

Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans, is a brackish estuary rather than a true lake. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway crosses it on twin bridges nearly 24 miles long.

Why parishes instead of counties?

The parish system comes from Louisiana’s French and Spanish colonial era, when Roman Catholic church parishes served as local administrative units. The territorial legislature divided the Territory of Orleans into 19 parishes in 1807, and the name stayed after statehood. Parishes do the same job as counties elsewhere, and the Census Bureau treats them as county equivalents. That is why the interactive map’s county toggle shows parish lines here.

Major highways

• I-10: the main east–west route, from the Texas line through Lake Charles, Lafayette, Baton Rouge and New Orleans to Slidell and Mississippi. Between Lafayette and Baton Rouge it crosses the Atchafalaya Basin on a bridge about 18 miles long.
• I-12: a bypass from Baton Rouge to Slidell along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, through Hammond and Covington.
• I-20: across north Louisiana from Texas through Shreveport, Ruston and Monroe to Vicksburg, Mississippi.
• I-49: north–south from Lafayette through Opelousas, Alexandria and Natchitoches to Shreveport, continuing toward Arkansas.
• I-55 and I-59: from the New Orleans area north into Mississippi, via Hammond (I-55) and Slidell (I-59).
• US 90: the coastal route from Lake Charles through Lafayette, New Iberia and Morgan City to New Orleans.
• US 61 and US 165: US 61 links New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Natchez, Mississippi; US 165 runs from near Lake Charles through Alexandria to Monroe.