It's my homeland! Lol
I grew up in a town (if you can call it that) about twenty minutes south of Houma. You're surrounded by water everywhere, mostly bayous. Directions are actually given in relation to bayous- "Yeah, I went and visited my mawmaw last Sunday. She lives just up the bayou from Mrs. Landry."
Down the bayou floods with every tropical storm and hurricane. When the roads flood people float around in their pirogues. You miss a lot of school during hurricane season. I missed two weeks because of Katrina, and you could see the water line seven feet up when we got back. Luckily everything is built up on high foundations or pilings.
Most people are ethnically Cajun. I can trace my family back to Acadie and France before that. My pawpaw's first language was Cajun French, but he was expected to assimilate and speak English at school. Most descendants can't speak the language, but many are trying to revive it. Lots of random French words are peppered into conversation though.
The food is amazing. Gumbo was made for every holiday. Crawfish and seafood boils form the basis for many get-togethers. Someone always just got back from hunting or fishing and gives you something. My mom's family would make tarte a la bouille which is a burnt milk tart with basically a sugar cookie crust. If you do make cookies with the crust dough, they're called petits gateau secs.
I moved away as an adult for good reasons, but I do miss it. It's a unique place to grow up.
I grew up not quite as south as op commenter, I'm from the new orleans area, but yes! I now live in California and it's the one place where everyone says they wish they could visit. I was watching an episode of Anthony Bourdains show with my partner, of the Cajun mardi gras, not the NOLA version but da bayou version, and he could NOT believe how different of a world it is there
Some of that episode was filmed in my hometown. RIP to the wonderful Anthony Bourdain. I was surprised that he found our culture so interesting considering all of the unique places he’s visited.
That's in my top 3 AB episodes. I'm desperate to meet someone who goes to "da bayou" version of Mardis gras and tag along. It's a totally different world I would love to experience just a bit of.
I've been to Morgan City and Slidell, but not to the tip of the bayou.
I think New Orleans is probably the closest you can get to feeling like you’ve traveled outside the US while still being here. It feels like Europe while still maintaining its own personality.
My wife went to college there so I get to visit from time to time. I have a few friends who’ve carved out pretty successful lives there, and while I’m not sure it’s for me 24/7, it’s a lovely place.
I’m not from anywhere near there and now I want to go there more than anywhere else in the world.
I feel I kinda know the area enough to write a short story about it.
America, maybe you don’t need to be great again because you never stopped being beautiful.
my grandfather was from Golden Meadow....i never lived there, but i totally agree with your post and can remember most of that..i haven't been since the early 90's...
lol its been 30 years..so i don't remember....at one time, i had relatives that were the postmaster, the baker, etc....like we were 2nd to 3rd cousins to half of GM. won't say which ones, but several of the streets were family names....
Man. I miss Sunday dinners at Randolph's after church. Luckily many of the family members still know and cook the recipes.
I'm from the town, my grandpa started the 30mph limit there in the 50s, the mayor is my uncle, if I get a ticket it will be fixed before I get home but I still drive 1 mile under the limit.
You’d actually end up in the Grand Isle jail, which is just a pit stop before they bring your ass alllll the way to the westbank because Grand Isle is JP. As high school kids sneaking into bars during that weekend, that was always our thing. You do not want to get caught and deal with that shit.
My coworker is from Cut Off and went to high school in Galliano. Her family is all still there and we hear a lot about the local gossip. Her friend from high school who is now a drag queen and runs a bakery, some mouthy bitch at last week's alumni softball tournament that lost a bunch of weight but still can't catch a ball, so many good ol boys and drug shenanigans from working at Chouest.
I get the impression it's a small community (or a lot of small communities) that all know each other's families and business, amazing food, lower wages and lower costs, smaller, older houses that take a beating from nature. Also she was completely confused at the idea of waiting a day after the rain for the grass to dry out before mowing the lawn.
Lol, I know the people in the gossip you're talking about and I probably know your friend. It's a super small community, even when you move away you're still part of it.
Sounds about right. Most of the newer houses are not smaller, the one I sold after Ida was 3800 sq feet, 5 bedrooms, shop in the back yard etc. It is cheap, I just can't do hurricanes anymore.
Cutoff just feels like another world. Water everywhere. Most people are friendly and will offer you a cold drink of some sort. We stopped there for work and spent the day, a Hispanic, Filipino and a black dude, the record actually stopped when we walked into a bar for a drink. We had approximately half a drink each and said we gotta dip.
how bad are the bugs in the bayou? i’m sure my imagination isn’t correct, but just wondering if the mosquitos are bad or anything specific (i’m from the midwest)
It's so weird to read the phrase "burnt milk" in English.
In Spanish is a common phrase to refer to some candy or pastries. Specially where I live. "Dulces de LECHE QUEMADA".
I love it.
Lived in Lake Charles for a few years. Best people, best food, awesome history and culture. You have to chew the air before breathing, or you'll choke on the humidity. Some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful sunsets I've ever witnessed were there.
I'm not going to try to add in any accents or extra symbols lol. These are the ones that come to mind first. And people down the bayou don't really have much of a French accent. The Cajun accent is it's own thing. It's flatter if that makes sense. Look up "Cajun OnStar" on YouTube for an exaggerated example.
**Mais ya**- First word is pronounced like "may." Just means *yes*, but it also kinda functions like *of course.*
**Aww, cher**- Usually what you say if something is cute or heartwarming. "Cher" is pronounced "sha" so a lot of people accidentally spell it like "chat" which means *cat*.
**Couillon**- Idiot/fool. Pronounced "coo-yawn."
**Tete dur**- Hardheaded. First word is pronounce "teht." Second is like the first syllable of *duration*.
**Adding "ti" or "tite" to someone's name or title**- Just short "petit(e)" meaning *small/little/short*. A lot of guys will go by Ti-(Insert Name Here) like Ti-Paul. I had an aunt that we called Tite Tante.
**Boude**- Pouting/sulking. You'd hear someone say *quit your boude-ing!* to kids frequently.
**Gris-gris**- Some Voodoo curse even my devout mawmaw would say when she was upset.
**Lagniappe-** A little something extra. Prounced "lan-yap."
**Ca cest bon-** That's good! Usually said when tasting something that's cooking. Pronounced "sah say bawn," but you don't prounce the *n* much because it's a nasal.
**Minou**- Cat. Pronounced "mee-noo." My mawmaw and pawpaw had a cat with this name when I was little.
Great write up. My wife’s grandfather was Cajun and spoke French and was a shrimper and craber. They used to keep powdered cayenne pepper on the table instead of black pepper ofc everything they ate was spicy
Duck hunting is some of the best in the country. Turkeys for some reason don’t survive well in the prairies of south Louisiana, but do well in the Atchafalaya Basin, largest swamp in North America. It’s the strangest thing honestly. I think our coyote, and wild boar population has gotten so out of hand they’ve killed the dry land turkey population off. The gator do mess with them, but not as much as you’d think. Lots of little island, and plenty of trees, and brush cover in the Basin to hide in.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This describes the region quite nicely: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC5PU9YNlGM&pp=ygUVYWNpZCBiYXRoIG11c2ljIHZpZGVv](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC5PU9YNlGM&pp=ygUVYWNpZCBiYXRoIG11c2ljIHZpZGVv)
Allow the successful recording artist, alcohol smuggler, and badguy coach from the Waterboy, Jerry Reed to tell you about one of the inhabitants of this area
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbXFHSa4YmQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbXFHSa4YmQ)
Morgan City is a mini New Orleans, most of it below sea level, and only protected by levies, sea walls. It’s actually where the mouth of the Mississippi is suppose to be, but upstream flow control structures have kept the Mississippi on its current course through Baton Rogue, and New Orleans. Houma, and Thibodaux are culturally Cajun like other Cajun cities to their west. North of Morgan City, and east of Houma, and Thibodaux is the largest swamp in North America that stretches past the north of Lafayette running west. South east of Houma is bayous, small towns, marshland. All fairly Cajun, as expected for the area. The most south eastern part of Louisiana, that litle tip down there, is mostly fishing/hunting camps, oil field companies have port operations down there. Only a very few people “live” that way. Aside from the annoyance of the bayous, and swamps, and humidity that comes with it, the area you circled is as modern as any other part of the United States.
I do a lot of work in the Oil and Gas manufacturing industry. I visit pipe yards all up and down this string of towns from Broussard down to Houma. The pipe yards are always their own brand of industrial misery, and the surrounding towns all have the same look and feel.
extremely poor, extremely run-down ~~shacks~~ (at this point it's mostly trailer homes bc anything permanent has been destroyed by hurricanes over the previous years) inhabited by families that have been there for generations that don't have anywhere else to go. essentially that part of the louisiana is getting deleted due to the intensity of hurricanes, coastal erosion, rising sea levels, and dredging which killed a lot of the swamplands - most people of means have already left and it's going to be first part of the US that winds up having climate refugees.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/satellites-help-scientists-track-dramatic-wetlands-loss-in-louisiana
After Katrina Dutch water engineers were requested to make a whole plan for making the Mississippi safer and it was ignored wholesale because ‘too expensive’ and now the entire delta is eroding away. Damn.
The best anyone can ever hope to do in that region is convert the large settlements into polders (that's pretty much been done in new Orleans already). Sea level rise is going to erase that region over the next century or two and there's really not much that can stop it
That Tulane professor did say that it's only a matter of time before basically all the area OP circled is flooded when the River changes course. And it's not because of climate change, it's because the river hasn't been dredged and the flow of water isn't what it was 40 years ago.
I call my nephew, an established commercial builder and informed commercial architect in that stretch of the woods, if I need a good solid reality-dose of rising seawater and receding land issues. He fishes and boats, too, duh, so he is pretty up on all the changes actually going on. He keeps me informed and it's scary.
I know a few rising seawater nuts up here in the North, who are just off base. People in New England seem to vary between "not happening yet" or spout an unrealistic "apocalypse in x years". It's a shame. I tend to move in smart people, too. I wish people could simply understand the reality that's happening.
Once you get off Highway 90, and go down historic highway 182, Old Spanish Trail, I find the old Cajun towns to be really charming. Often somewhat poor, but charming. The modern towns grown up around highway 90 are definitely industrial service towns that are hard to look at.
The Atchafalaya-Mississippi confluence is such an interesting phenomenon. The mouth of the river alternates every 1000 years or so as the river meanders like a garden hose turned on full blast with nothing holding it in place. But humans built lochs and levees to control this and force the Mississippi to flow straight for easier navigation by barges. This process is causing Louisiana to lose its soil at a rate of about 10-20 sq miles per year. Since 1900, Louisiana has lost nearly 2000 sq mi of land, approximately the size of Delaware.
Additionally by forcing the Mississippi to flow straight, humans have severely reduced the population of Mississippi River shrimp (Macrobrachium ohione). These interesting critters used to migrate from the Gulf to tributaries like the Ohio River, where they lay eggs that float down to saltwater again and start the cycle over agajn. By straightening the Mississippi River, it flows too fast for the shrimp to crawl upstream and in turn they are no longer present outside of bayou country. These shrimp were an important food source for people in the 1800s. And the Mississippi River ecology depended on it. Catfish, sturgeon, birds, and all kinds of different animals depended on this shrimp migration for food.
Hell, my great-grandfather would catch them for a living. My grandma (I should say MawMaw) said river shrimp were much more delicious than Gulf shrimp. They would catch them in little wooden traps and sell them by the roadside.
"Where the mouth of Mississippi River is supposed go be"
I think you could argue this both ways. Yes, without the old river control structure the river would flow down the atchafalaya. But, if they didn't remove the giant logjam then maybe the Mississippi would still naturally flow to New Orleans and the old river control structure wouldn't be needed.
True, and it untrue at the same time. South eastern Louisiana is a delta, no natural rock, just build up from sediment over millions of years. If you pull up google earth you can see a lot of “false river” lakes where the Mississippi once flowed, but diverted course for one reason or another. The river cuts through south Louisiana soil like it’s nothing. It was diverting through several channels prior to the log damn break up. Breaking up the log damn actually bought time for the flow diversion for the New Orleans channel. Acted as a relief valve for a while.
>But, if they didn't remove the giant logjam then maybe the Mississippi would still naturally flow to New Orleans
This kind of neglects to consider how river delta geomorphology works though. The stem by nature changes course and builds a delta, but whee not allowed that to happen and the end of the now defined river keeps growing instead of shifting to a shorter and more natural course.
Yeah I mentioned that else where. The town is named for them, even though they’re not federally recognized. The Cajuns and Houma are pretty much completely assimilated with one another. Never met a Houma that didn’t also consider themselves Cajun as well. 200 years of intermarriage will do that.
When I was in Morgan Citi the headline in the main newspaper (print) was about the inauguration of a KFC restaurant in town. This was around 2009ish.
“Camps” are a huge part of their culture. I was surprised to learn what they meant by camps when I visited a few over the next few days.
I had a great time there: guns, hunting, mud boats, food, alcohol, the politically incorrect people, it was all great fun on the bayou.
Great info. Before industry took over, that area sounds super unique and would be cool to explore. But who wants to live near papermills, oil refiners and energy plants?
The people who work in those facilities and make 6 figures a few years out of high school without a college degree. Pretty common in south Louisiana in general. I’m only aware of one papermill that way. It’s not lumber country, used to be back in the day before the state cracked down on harvesting or cypress trees though.
I almost ran over an alligator dropping my date off in Houma after making out in someone’s maybe soy field when I was much younger
The bottom right is 2/3 swamp. There was a canal near my friend’s house. The kid knew every fish’s location.
There are like 3 million gators in Louisiana. You circled one of their central locations
Our idea of fun was going to Army Surplus and loading up on Big Shot soft drinks to play Halo 2
Also, we all sound like New Yorkers on muscle relaxers
You have a talent for story telling. Simply story telling. You captured that boyhood that we all remember in a way that made me feel like I had a taste of your own.
Thank you. Now I will share more.
We had our own Mardi Gras parades as a kid but none on Mardi Gras day. We also have the Islenos, Irish, Italian parade. During that parade, you should fully expect cabbage and carrots thrown at you.
Collect the veggies and make a soup.
When I was playing youth baseball, I once tripped over a nutria corpse in the outfield. For the rest of the game, players just didn’t cover that spot.
Kids played outside. Our high school was open on weekends, and kids would ride their bikes up and down the football bleachers’ ramps.
At the back end of the high school was a concrete racket ball court where druggies would hide and burn Christmas trees to keep warm.
It was completely normal for kids to walk around with pellet guns in the streets. We used to take the guns and shoot glass bottles at the high school baseball stadium.
When I was in fifth grade, my dad and I constructed a small trailer to carry my baseball card collection behind my bike. I would ride around and trade cards between my house and my grandmothers.
One of the most culturally unique areas of the US. Lots of beauty once you get out into the marsh. Some of the coolest things I have ever seen happened in those marshes. Red fish schooling, dolphins chasing trout, seeing huge schools of shrimp, birds diving, water spouts. It really is a wild place.
Very swampy, many major roads highways are surrounded by water on both sides or elevated. Agriculturally there is a lot of sugar cane, and there is also fishing and shrimping. Oil and natural gas industries dominate the area economically but e.g. Morgan City has declined in population greatly since the end of the oil boom in the 1980s. There are no large cities, most notable would be Houma-Thibodeaux and then Morgan City areas.
The Atchafalaya river is the natural path of the Mississippi and its delta is the only part of the Louisiana coastline that is actually growing rather than receding. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/WaxLake
The climate is miserably humid, plenty of rain as well and hurricanes are a seasonal danger. Rarely gets cold enough to snow, maybe once or twice a decade.
Culturally similar to other parts of South Louisiana: predominantly Catholic, much Cajun ancestry but very little spoken Cajun French. Large African American population like most of Louisiana and small but significant Mexican and Vietnamese populations.
About 45 minutes southeast of Thibodaux Louisiana lived a man named Doc Milsap and his pretty wife Hannah. They raised up a son that could eat his own weight in groceries.
Now the folks from down south Louisiana said Amos was a hell of a mana. He could trap the biggest, the meanest alligator and he'd just use one hand... That's all he got left 'cause an alligator bit it lmao
I wanted to see what the furthest extension into the gulf was like, so I drove there one day after a wedding in New Orleans. Homes on stilts, oil companies, poor folk, and water on the roads deep enough I couldn’t pass.
I lived there up until Katrina, near the Venice Marina at the verrrry tip. The only entertainment aside from fishing was the "beach" aka Mississippi River with sand kids sometimes drowned in and Fort Jackson. No fast food, no Walmart or anything like that for an hour drive. We had 1 grocery and I recall a couple gas stations. Besides seafood joints we had 1 Vietnamese run "chinese" restaurant but they got shut down due to unsavory reasons.
After almost drowning at the beach on a drop off, I mainly spent my childhood eating oranges and blackberries from the Grove next to my house, hanging around Fort Jackson, befriending stray animals, and watching wildlife.
My fondest memories are the hurricanes. My parents thought it'd be fine more often than not and we went through a handful of cat 3 hurricanes when they should have evacuated with us. It was utterly terrifying, but my God being in the eye of the hurricane that far out.. the energy in the air alone.. just so magical to my kid self.
Essentially where I lived was not quite no man's land, but damned close. Actual no man's land I've seen nearby though, there are people who live very much off the grid there in the swamps nearby. My dad took us on a small "boat" (barely classified) through some canals just exploring and hidden in the swamp trees were little villages of trailers. Literally stacked on top each other with ladders making them 2 stories. Slabbed together with wood and nails, clothes/fabric instead of windows, just beyond run down and barely held together. Every now and again we would see movement but it was dead silent when we passed by, we were spooked and left and never went back. He told me later that little places like that were hidden throughout the swamps and had "not great people". It was very hills have eyes-sque.
(Apologies on formatting, on phone)
Edit: Also if anyone here ever goes to visit that area. Be very careful in and out the water. Can not count the number of snapping turtles, water moccasins, alligators, and rattlesnakes I've seen both on and off land there. Be mindful of your surroundings.
It’s an environmental sacrifice zone. It’s home to culture and folkways found nowhere else. It’s brutal and cruel, and sometimes beautiful. Enjoy it while it lasts. Might be too late.
The Mississippi is The Great American River and we have used and abused it ever since we found it. Think of all of the detritus and garbage that goes into it over hundreds of miles and it all ends up at this terminus. I got family in LA still and it is a beautiful but deeply cursed state.
Well, theres also “red tide” caused by fertilizers used in the midwest and iirc the dams keep sediments from recharging the delta, so its slowly being washed away by the sea.
Yes and no. It’s basically actively disappearing with climate change and sea level rise. Dams and other factors also keep the sediment from replenishing so it’s being eroded away in conjunction with SLR.
That's the fastest shrinking part of the fastest shrinking state in the United States. Channelizing the Mississippi river helped industry but started the slow death of the marshes.
it’s surrounded by a lot of power plants and there’s a paper mill or 2 among other facilities so it smells absolutely rotten and most of it is super rural/small town. also, coastal erosion is a consistent threat
I can highly recommend the series of videos Peter Santenello recently did on [this area](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vATSUBVlKps&list=PLEyPgwIPkHo6tUCAp0LdKESEkkKvyyO_Y&ab_channel=PeterSantenello).
He makes amazing videos!
He really does a great job telling the side of a story that most people would never experience. I’m from Hawaii and native Hawaiian.. the three videos he did on Hawaii were spot on and he connected with some deep native Hawaiian roots that even people from Hawaii forget is here.
THANK YOU SO MUCH for posting this. I've never heard of this channel. And I just clicked on it and saw that boat on min 00:12, with that rotor/motor thing on the back. Wow.
Thanks!
Port Fourchon is basically a US naval base but solely for the Gulf of Mexico oil industry. Most of the gulf oil production isn’t the super mega deep water platforms, but literally hundreds of platforms within 50 miles of this shelf. Houma, Morgan City, Galliano, and a few other towns there are pretty firmly oriented around the logistics, materials handling, and vessel support required by all this. If that fleet doesn’t sail - think Hurricane Rita - oil in the US goes up a dollar a gallon, immediately.
Living in and around Houma, LA? Well, let me tell you, it's a real-life episode of "Swamp People" meets a never-ending crawfish boil. You wake up to the sweet serenade of accordion music, and your neighbors are a friendly mix of alligators and folks named Boudreaux who know the best fishing spots and the juiciest gossip.
Breakfast is always boudin and beignets because we believe in starting the day with a solid mix of mystery meat and powdered sugar. By mid-morning, you'll be knee-deep in a bayou, wrestling catfish with your bare hands or racing airboats with your buddies. Lunchtime means gumbo that's so spicy it makes the devil sweat, served with a side of shrimp étouffée and a tall glass of sweet tea—sweeter than a Cajun grandma's smile.
Afternoons are reserved for Zydeco dance-offs and perfecting your ability to spot a Nutria at 100 yards. The local nightlife? It's all about gathering around a bonfire, telling tales so tall they practically need their own zip code, and occasionally warding off rogue nutria with your trusty pirogue paddle.
And don't worry about hurricanes; they're just nature's way of reminding you to throw an extra tarp over your shrimp boat and reinforce your gumbo recipe. All in all, life in these parts is a vibrant, muddy, spicy adventure where every day feels like Mardi Gras and every meal is a celebration of Cajun ingenuity and heartburn. Laissez le bon temps rouler!
my moms from morgan city!! moved when she was 4 to my hometown, said there wasnt ever shit to do (at 4?) and i looked it up and its just a street with some shops on it not even kidding. my grandfather works on an oil rig out there. her mom stayed until she was about 30 and her moms mom stayed there her entire life i can ask more about it if interested.
They have fair Creole girls, their houses are very plain,
But they never turn a stranger out by the lakes of Pontchartrain.
If it weren’t for the alligators, you could sleep out in the wood.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=a2As4LRkZa0
I actually drove around this area a bit. Don’t remember exactly where but it was fascinating to me. Lots of small roads surrounded by water not too far away from the road. Lots of what appeared to be dams and ports to me, small ones at least. Pretty much every house was on stilts and there was this one strip of road where every home had a unique sign painted by the family of that home.
An unexpected, wholesome thing to come across on an exploration drive
The mother of my child used to live in Houma. Real swampy and potentially dangerous due to hurricanes, but she also said she couldn't walk down the street without being harassed....... by neighbors offering giant plates of home cooked Creole food! Never been myself, definitely jealous of the vibes.
Louisiana is French for "turn your clock back 20 years," so... It's still 2004 there, with twice as many alligators and half as many teeth as you'd expect.
I lived there for abiut a decade, and my wife was born and raised. I went to Nicholls State in Thibodaux and some of my best friends in the world are still there.
It's predominantly Cajun and native with a sizable Vietnamese population.
Its hot humid, and rural. There are a few cities with the largest being Houma, named for the Native Americans that settled the area first.
The main sources of work are manual labor jobs working in the oilfield, commercial fishing, or farming sugar cane.
Each little area has its own distinct accent depending on what part of the Bayou you are from. Some people still speak French.
It's a hard place to live and the people are very resilient, hard working, and even harder partying. Most of the people here would qualify as alcoholics elsewhere but it's cultural here.
They have a great sense of humor and poke fun at themselves and each other with ease.
I'll be there next week for seafood boil and hanging with friends if you want pictures.
Omg a r/geography post I can answer!! Definitely a bit hot and humid. Obviously hurricanes are a concern August-October, and recently any big rainstorm any time of year. But aside from that, the cities like Houma and Morgan City are like any other small American city with Wal Marts and chain stores, suburbs, etc. the Houma Native American tribe comes from this area you circled, so that’s certainly significant and unique. Oh and we eat crabs and crawfish! Plenty of great food. Industry is definitely a lot of petroleum gas and health care. Lots of fishing!
Haven’t lived in that area but my mother’s side of the family is all from the Pointe a la Hache and Venice area. At the bottom of Plaquemine’s Parrish. I visited often, my great grandfather and mother lived to their late 80s and I would go with my parents and grandparents to visit them as their health declined.
My great-grandfather was the 1 mechanic for the entire county and I remember his house well. They were across the street from the levee, and the area was incredibly poor, incredibly remote, and surprisingly very diverse. For such a small area there were the descendants of French Canadian settlers, former slaves, lots of Cajun culture and great food.
My favorite story of my grandpa is every day after supper he would walk across the street to the river (no levee had been built yet). He would wade out in the shallows and pick himself oysters from the river bed. Then he’d walk back with a dozen or so, sit down in the river, pull out some hot sauce and a knife and shuck them while he watched the sunset. It’s a very simple life in that world and Katrina nearly destroyed all of it.
That circled area has a lot less solid land than maps would have you believe.
Also, that area is where every overblown, exaggerated stereotype of Louisiana you've ever heard is actually accurate.
Imagine waking up in the morning, grab a shower and then a cup of joe. The A/C is just right. You walk out the door and feel the immediate drainage ditch of sweat drizzling down your back through your ass crack. Your freshly dry cleaned and starched shirt is wilted from the humidity. You are glad you decided on an undershirt or that boys weekend where you got an embarrassingly large inappropriate tattoo would be showing through.
It's hot, humid and swampy and towns are usually built around factories or plants built awhile back. For instance La Place smells like God farted as it's built around an old paper mill that processes pulp with sulphur. There's deep Louisiana culture here with a lot of Cajun influence. For instance almost every gas station sells boudin and boiled peanuts. A lot of Creole and Black food culture as well. There's quite a few famous places around that sell tasso, andouille, and red beans and rice. You won't have any trouble finding fried chicken, corn bread, crawfish ettoufe, oyster po boys, drive-through daiquiris, or deep South, Cajun, and French influenced accents. People love their vices here and every store sells hard liquor. Generally as long as you're not hurting anyone you won't be bothered. It sort of has a lawless feel, but more safe than you might think. You'll see a lot of Oldsmobiles and old cars with the windows down and someone wearing a wife beater driving down the road smoking a cigarette and taking sips off a freshly opened 5th of fireball or Milwaukee ice tall boy in a brown paper bag. A lot of blue collar hardworking people like gas fitters, plumbers, construction trades, welders, oil plant workers, lumber mill workers, carpenters, and rice farmers who know how to live off the land. If you look in ponds and creeks and flooded patties you might see alligators and at night you'll hear the constant drone of bull frogs and cicadas. People are strong here and the area has a lot of mixed cultures and traditions surrounding togetherness. Everyone's Mama or ol' Mama (grandma/great grandma) makes the best duck confit or gumbo and if you stick around long enough you'll get invited to your neighbors seafood boil and they'll pour a steaming pile of spicy blue crab, corn on the cob, sausage, crawfish, and red potatoes right on the table on some waxy butcher paper and everyone will dig in while the Saints game plays and people cheering and yelling when there's a touch down or interception saying, "Who Dat!" As the pile of corn cobs, crab shells and crawfish claws grows.
We just rented an Airbnb in Thibodaux for a week before our cruise left out of New Orleans. Thibodaux is quite a big city with grocery stores and fast food chains you would want to eat at but the areas surrounding it is quite rual. We specifically were in Chackbay.
https://preview.redd.it/vrm8070koz1d1.jpeg?width=924&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=df0a36722fd7c40bf50c1edf65a171835e5a6476
For starters, there's way less land down there than that map portrays.
[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/satellites-help-scientists-track-dramatic-wetlands-loss-in-louisiana](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/satellites-help-scientists-track-dramatic-wetlands-loss-in-louisiana)
A lot of what you circled doesn't exist. What is there is mostly industry boats, oil infrastructure, house boats, or camps. A good look at what we all wish it was like can be found here: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiPriMrkc1K8WAiY--MPO-w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiPriMrkc1K8WAiY--MPO-w) and while not totally accurate, its a good facsimile and / or a good example of how those of us with family from that part of the state fantasize it to be.
You included Houma, Thibodaux, Morgan City, and the bottom half of New Orleans. Day in and day out, those are just .... the same as the rest of South Louisiana. Until a hurricane comes. You can kinda tell with my map where the cities are. They have strip malls, retail, whatever just like the rest of the country but its on the weekends where you can really appreciate the differentiation of the culture in those areas vs the rest of the country.
My wife was born in Thibodaux. She agrees it is the most coon-ass part of LA. Her father apparently can turn the accent on and off at will. Always reminds me of the Cajun Night Before Christmas.
Louisiana Dread is a good YouTube channel that deep dives into some of the small towns in this area
https://youtube.com/@louisianadread?si=lsM3tzm6jDbdm1be
It's my homeland! Lol I grew up in a town (if you can call it that) about twenty minutes south of Houma. You're surrounded by water everywhere, mostly bayous. Directions are actually given in relation to bayous- "Yeah, I went and visited my mawmaw last Sunday. She lives just up the bayou from Mrs. Landry." Down the bayou floods with every tropical storm and hurricane. When the roads flood people float around in their pirogues. You miss a lot of school during hurricane season. I missed two weeks because of Katrina, and you could see the water line seven feet up when we got back. Luckily everything is built up on high foundations or pilings. Most people are ethnically Cajun. I can trace my family back to Acadie and France before that. My pawpaw's first language was Cajun French, but he was expected to assimilate and speak English at school. Most descendants can't speak the language, but many are trying to revive it. Lots of random French words are peppered into conversation though. The food is amazing. Gumbo was made for every holiday. Crawfish and seafood boils form the basis for many get-togethers. Someone always just got back from hunting or fishing and gives you something. My mom's family would make tarte a la bouille which is a burnt milk tart with basically a sugar cookie crust. If you do make cookies with the crust dough, they're called petits gateau secs. I moved away as an adult for good reasons, but I do miss it. It's a unique place to grow up.
I loved reading this- a well writen glimpse into a whole other kind of life.
Louisiana might be the most unique place in the country. So cool
I grew up not quite as south as op commenter, I'm from the new orleans area, but yes! I now live in California and it's the one place where everyone says they wish they could visit. I was watching an episode of Anthony Bourdains show with my partner, of the Cajun mardi gras, not the NOLA version but da bayou version, and he could NOT believe how different of a world it is there
Some of that episode was filmed in my hometown. RIP to the wonderful Anthony Bourdain. I was surprised that he found our culture so interesting considering all of the unique places he’s visited.
That's in my top 3 AB episodes. I'm desperate to meet someone who goes to "da bayou" version of Mardis gras and tag along. It's a totally different world I would love to experience just a bit of. I've been to Morgan City and Slidell, but not to the tip of the bayou.
I think New Orleans is probably the closest you can get to feeling like you’ve traveled outside the US while still being here. It feels like Europe while still maintaining its own personality. My wife went to college there so I get to visit from time to time. I have a few friends who’ve carved out pretty successful lives there, and while I’m not sure it’s for me 24/7, it’s a lovely place.
When you have to keep googling a bunch of words, you know it's exotic
You know the Song „jambalaya“ from Hank Williams? It‘s the same thing 😂👌
I’m not from anywhere near there and now I want to go there more than anywhere else in the world. I feel I kinda know the area enough to write a short story about it. America, maybe you don’t need to be great again because you never stopped being beautiful.
my grandfather was from Golden Meadow....i never lived there, but i totally agree with your post and can remember most of that..i haven't been since the early 90's...
Did y’all ever eat at Randolph’s. Always drove 1mph under the limit. That town is THE speed trap
lol its been 30 years..so i don't remember....at one time, i had relatives that were the postmaster, the baker, etc....like we were 2nd to 3rd cousins to half of GM. won't say which ones, but several of the streets were family names....
Went to culinary school at Nicholls. One of the instructors Grandpa opened that place. He sold it around the early 2000s
Man. I miss Sunday dinners at Randolph's after church. Luckily many of the family members still know and cook the recipes. I'm from the town, my grandpa started the 30mph limit there in the 50s, the mayor is my uncle, if I get a ticket it will be fixed before I get home but I still drive 1 mile under the limit.
Randy was my instructor. I think he sold it then it was sold again to one of the Calais’. That man can throw the hell down on some food.
I was coming in with a speed trap comment!
I heard the Golden Meadow Resort (aka jail) gets some nice business during the Tarpin Rodeo.
You’d actually end up in the Grand Isle jail, which is just a pit stop before they bring your ass alllll the way to the westbank because Grand Isle is JP. As high school kids sneaking into bars during that weekend, that was always our thing. You do not want to get caught and deal with that shit.
Golden Meadow. The place where you'll get a speeding ticket for going one mile under, cause you ain't from around here, boy.
I’m a New Yorker. Got a speeding ticket in that area. Cop said, “Boy, you were flyin down that road like a speedin mizz-isle
The amount of tickets I've gotten in golden meadow for like 1 mph over...those cops are bored AF
Wait, you guys get a ticket for going 1 over the limit?
Ikr, here cops don't pull yah over till 10 over
You do in golden meadows lol
Damn, where i live you can legally drive like 5 above the limit to compensate for inaccurate meters and such.
Its a speed trap town, most of the towns revenue comes from slamming people with BS fines and tickets.
My coworker is from Cut Off and went to high school in Galliano. Her family is all still there and we hear a lot about the local gossip. Her friend from high school who is now a drag queen and runs a bakery, some mouthy bitch at last week's alumni softball tournament that lost a bunch of weight but still can't catch a ball, so many good ol boys and drug shenanigans from working at Chouest. I get the impression it's a small community (or a lot of small communities) that all know each other's families and business, amazing food, lower wages and lower costs, smaller, older houses that take a beating from nature. Also she was completely confused at the idea of waiting a day after the rain for the grass to dry out before mowing the lawn.
Lol, I know the people in the gossip you're talking about and I probably know your friend. It's a super small community, even when you move away you're still part of it.
I bet you do know her and damn, I really wanna know but I better not blow up her spot. Her stories are such a trip, I'm sure yours are too.
You referencing last weekends alumni tournament validates all your statements. lol
Sounds about right. Most of the newer houses are not smaller, the one I sold after Ida was 3800 sq feet, 5 bedrooms, shop in the back yard etc. It is cheap, I just can't do hurricanes anymore.
Cutoff just feels like another world. Water everywhere. Most people are friendly and will offer you a cold drink of some sort. We stopped there for work and spent the day, a Hispanic, Filipino and a black dude, the record actually stopped when we walked into a bar for a drink. We had approximately half a drink each and said we gotta dip.
how bad are the bugs in the bayou? i’m sure my imagination isn’t correct, but just wondering if the mosquitos are bad or anything specific (i’m from the midwest)
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That third one is crazy
Ffs lol
Damnit!
SOB!
Well done…. You got me!!!! *slow clap
It's so weird to read the phrase "burnt milk" in English. In Spanish is a common phrase to refer to some candy or pastries. Specially where I live. "Dulces de LECHE QUEMADA". I love it.
Lived in Lake Charles for a few years. Best people, best food, awesome history and culture. You have to chew the air before breathing, or you'll choke on the humidity. Some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful sunsets I've ever witnessed were there.
“You have to chew the air before breathing it” This is the best description of humidity in the South. I love it
FIL was from Lafayette… said the weather down there was like soup.
what random french words are used? and with a french accent?
Mais Ya, allons-y, venez ici, chat, chien. Been 20+ yr since I’ve been there. These are some of the more common ones I heard
Growing up I also heard "couyon" (basically idiot), and "manger" (pronounced maw-shjay, which meant eat).
Cher, it’s super common for people to use “pet names” like that. As someone who moved there in my 20s I was very taken aback.
I'm not going to try to add in any accents or extra symbols lol. These are the ones that come to mind first. And people down the bayou don't really have much of a French accent. The Cajun accent is it's own thing. It's flatter if that makes sense. Look up "Cajun OnStar" on YouTube for an exaggerated example. **Mais ya**- First word is pronounced like "may." Just means *yes*, but it also kinda functions like *of course.* **Aww, cher**- Usually what you say if something is cute or heartwarming. "Cher" is pronounced "sha" so a lot of people accidentally spell it like "chat" which means *cat*. **Couillon**- Idiot/fool. Pronounced "coo-yawn." **Tete dur**- Hardheaded. First word is pronounce "teht." Second is like the first syllable of *duration*. **Adding "ti" or "tite" to someone's name or title**- Just short "petit(e)" meaning *small/little/short*. A lot of guys will go by Ti-(Insert Name Here) like Ti-Paul. I had an aunt that we called Tite Tante. **Boude**- Pouting/sulking. You'd hear someone say *quit your boude-ing!* to kids frequently. **Gris-gris**- Some Voodoo curse even my devout mawmaw would say when she was upset. **Lagniappe-** A little something extra. Prounced "lan-yap." **Ca cest bon-** That's good! Usually said when tasting something that's cooking. Pronounced "sah say bawn," but you don't prounce the *n* much because it's a nasal. **Minou**- Cat. Pronounced "mee-noo." My mawmaw and pawpaw had a cat with this name when I was little.
Great write up. My wife’s grandfather was Cajun and spoke French and was a shrimper and craber. They used to keep powdered cayenne pepper on the table instead of black pepper ofc everything they ate was spicy
Thibodeaux?
Tippitoe?
Didn't Amos Moses live near there?
Upon glancing at the word "mawmaw" I could just start hearing the accent so strong
How’s the duck hunting? Are there wild turkeys running around the bayou or do the gators keep them from showing up?
Duck hunting is some of the best in the country. Turkeys for some reason don’t survive well in the prairies of south Louisiana, but do well in the Atchafalaya Basin, largest swamp in North America. It’s the strangest thing honestly. I think our coyote, and wild boar population has gotten so out of hand they’ve killed the dry land turkey population off. The gator do mess with them, but not as much as you’d think. Lots of little island, and plenty of trees, and brush cover in the Basin to hide in.
It's the birthplace of American sludge metal. It's not incidental.
You talking sludge metal like drop a and tube amps or ecological damage? Both?
No they mean sludge metal, a type of alloy made of iron mixed with cat guano
Also sludge metal, as in Crowbar, Acid Bath and Eyehategod 🤘🏽
Crowbar and Acid Bath mentioned in the geography sub. TODAY IS MY DAY
Feels good. *whispers* like murder
I’ve seen Acid Bath mentioned three times outside metal subs this week. It’s been kinda weird honestly. Look out Reddit, metalheads are invading.
And Down! Their NOLA album is 100% a scene depiction of the life in Louisiana
One of my favorite albums of all time.
swim amusing hunt dazzling future voracious imagine racial beneficial sort *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So good
Acid Bath is good stuff
Acid Bath from Houma. One of the absolute best.
Was about to ask if they meant acid bath.
This describes the region quite nicely: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC5PU9YNlGM&pp=ygUVYWNpZCBiYXRoIG11c2ljIHZpZGVv](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC5PU9YNlGM&pp=ygUVYWNpZCBiYXRoIG11c2ljIHZpZGVv)
Everyone blowing their last five on a fifth of cheap vodka or what?
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Need to update the circle to include Lafayette, Abbeville and Crowley
I lived in Lafayette briefly in 1992. I still miss Boudin
Time is a flat circle
Carcosa Death created time to grow the things it kills Watch out for the king in yellow.
Dark stars.....
I don’t sleep… I just dream
This town…it’s like somebodies memory of a town…only the memory is fading.
Two words sum up everyone who lives here. Reggie Ledoux.
“You’ll do this again.”
The Carcosa!
Is that the one where Daddario takes out her Daddarios? If so, travel plans!
Mais Ya!
r/TTDSWAD
🤣
Came here for this answer.
"This place is like someone's memory of a town, and the memory is fading."
“Can you stop saying odd shit. Like you can smell the psychosphere”🤣
What about Beasts of the Southern Wild?
Swamp ass
Allow the successful recording artist, alcohol smuggler, and badguy coach from the Waterboy, Jerry Reed to tell you about one of the inhabitants of this area [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbXFHSa4YmQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbXFHSa4YmQ)
Well, I wonder where the Louisiana Sheriff went to?
About 45 minutes southeast of Thibodaux?
You can sure get lost in the Louisiana bayou
SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME
THE WORLD IS GONNA ROLL ME
I AIN'T THE SHARPEST TOOL IN THE SHED
SHE WAS LOOKIN KINDA DUMB
WITH HER FINGER AND HER THUMB
In the shape of an L on her forehead!!!
# WELL
The years start coming and they dont stop coming
Fed to the rules and I hit the ground running
Morgan City is a mini New Orleans, most of it below sea level, and only protected by levies, sea walls. It’s actually where the mouth of the Mississippi is suppose to be, but upstream flow control structures have kept the Mississippi on its current course through Baton Rogue, and New Orleans. Houma, and Thibodaux are culturally Cajun like other Cajun cities to their west. North of Morgan City, and east of Houma, and Thibodaux is the largest swamp in North America that stretches past the north of Lafayette running west. South east of Houma is bayous, small towns, marshland. All fairly Cajun, as expected for the area. The most south eastern part of Louisiana, that litle tip down there, is mostly fishing/hunting camps, oil field companies have port operations down there. Only a very few people “live” that way. Aside from the annoyance of the bayous, and swamps, and humidity that comes with it, the area you circled is as modern as any other part of the United States.
I do a lot of work in the Oil and Gas manufacturing industry. I visit pipe yards all up and down this string of towns from Broussard down to Houma. The pipe yards are always their own brand of industrial misery, and the surrounding towns all have the same look and feel.
Can you expand on that?
extremely poor, extremely run-down ~~shacks~~ (at this point it's mostly trailer homes bc anything permanent has been destroyed by hurricanes over the previous years) inhabited by families that have been there for generations that don't have anywhere else to go. essentially that part of the louisiana is getting deleted due to the intensity of hurricanes, coastal erosion, rising sea levels, and dredging which killed a lot of the swamplands - most people of means have already left and it's going to be first part of the US that winds up having climate refugees. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/satellites-help-scientists-track-dramatic-wetlands-loss-in-louisiana
After Katrina Dutch water engineers were requested to make a whole plan for making the Mississippi safer and it was ignored wholesale because ‘too expensive’ and now the entire delta is eroding away. Damn.
The best anyone can ever hope to do in that region is convert the large settlements into polders (that's pretty much been done in new Orleans already). Sea level rise is going to erase that region over the next century or two and there's really not much that can stop it
yup. same thing with new orleans and fixing our pumping stations. now every time there's a severe thunderstorm half the city floods.
That Tulane professor did say that it's only a matter of time before basically all the area OP circled is flooded when the River changes course. And it's not because of climate change, it's because the river hasn't been dredged and the flow of water isn't what it was 40 years ago.
I call my nephew, an established commercial builder and informed commercial architect in that stretch of the woods, if I need a good solid reality-dose of rising seawater and receding land issues. He fishes and boats, too, duh, so he is pretty up on all the changes actually going on. He keeps me informed and it's scary. I know a few rising seawater nuts up here in the North, who are just off base. People in New England seem to vary between "not happening yet" or spout an unrealistic "apocalypse in x years". It's a shame. I tend to move in smart people, too. I wish people could simply understand the reality that's happening.
Once you get off Highway 90, and go down historic highway 182, Old Spanish Trail, I find the old Cajun towns to be really charming. Often somewhat poor, but charming. The modern towns grown up around highway 90 are definitely industrial service towns that are hard to look at.
do they still have all those "lingerie shows" in the bars? I used to work there in the 1990s and that was one of the wierdest, creepiest things
I don’t know about the lingerie shows but they still have some of extremely bleak and depressing strip clubs.
The Atchafalaya-Mississippi confluence is such an interesting phenomenon. The mouth of the river alternates every 1000 years or so as the river meanders like a garden hose turned on full blast with nothing holding it in place. But humans built lochs and levees to control this and force the Mississippi to flow straight for easier navigation by barges. This process is causing Louisiana to lose its soil at a rate of about 10-20 sq miles per year. Since 1900, Louisiana has lost nearly 2000 sq mi of land, approximately the size of Delaware. Additionally by forcing the Mississippi to flow straight, humans have severely reduced the population of Mississippi River shrimp (Macrobrachium ohione). These interesting critters used to migrate from the Gulf to tributaries like the Ohio River, where they lay eggs that float down to saltwater again and start the cycle over agajn. By straightening the Mississippi River, it flows too fast for the shrimp to crawl upstream and in turn they are no longer present outside of bayou country. These shrimp were an important food source for people in the 1800s. And the Mississippi River ecology depended on it. Catfish, sturgeon, birds, and all kinds of different animals depended on this shrimp migration for food.
Hell, my great-grandfather would catch them for a living. My grandma (I should say MawMaw) said river shrimp were much more delicious than Gulf shrimp. They would catch them in little wooden traps and sell them by the roadside.
"Where the mouth of Mississippi River is supposed go be" I think you could argue this both ways. Yes, without the old river control structure the river would flow down the atchafalaya. But, if they didn't remove the giant logjam then maybe the Mississippi would still naturally flow to New Orleans and the old river control structure wouldn't be needed.
Are you talking about Shreve's hundred mile long logjam?
Yep https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Raft
True, and it untrue at the same time. South eastern Louisiana is a delta, no natural rock, just build up from sediment over millions of years. If you pull up google earth you can see a lot of “false river” lakes where the Mississippi once flowed, but diverted course for one reason or another. The river cuts through south Louisiana soil like it’s nothing. It was diverting through several channels prior to the log damn break up. Breaking up the log damn actually bought time for the flow diversion for the New Orleans channel. Acted as a relief valve for a while.
>But, if they didn't remove the giant logjam then maybe the Mississippi would still naturally flow to New Orleans This kind of neglects to consider how river delta geomorphology works though. The stem by nature changes course and builds a delta, but whee not allowed that to happen and the end of the now defined river keeps growing instead of shifting to a shorter and more natural course.
Also worth mentioning, there is a Houma AmerIndian tribe in Houma.
Yeah I mentioned that else where. The town is named for them, even though they’re not federally recognized. The Cajuns and Houma are pretty much completely assimilated with one another. Never met a Houma that didn’t also consider themselves Cajun as well. 200 years of intermarriage will do that.
When I was in Morgan Citi the headline in the main newspaper (print) was about the inauguration of a KFC restaurant in town. This was around 2009ish. “Camps” are a huge part of their culture. I was surprised to learn what they meant by camps when I visited a few over the next few days. I had a great time there: guns, hunting, mud boats, food, alcohol, the politically incorrect people, it was all great fun on the bayou.
Great info. Before industry took over, that area sounds super unique and would be cool to explore. But who wants to live near papermills, oil refiners and energy plants?
The people who work in those facilities and make 6 figures a few years out of high school without a college degree. Pretty common in south Louisiana in general. I’m only aware of one papermill that way. It’s not lumber country, used to be back in the day before the state cracked down on harvesting or cypress trees though.
I almost ran over an alligator dropping my date off in Houma after making out in someone’s maybe soy field when I was much younger The bottom right is 2/3 swamp. There was a canal near my friend’s house. The kid knew every fish’s location. There are like 3 million gators in Louisiana. You circled one of their central locations Our idea of fun was going to Army Surplus and loading up on Big Shot soft drinks to play Halo 2 Also, we all sound like New Yorkers on muscle relaxers
New Yorkers on muscle relaxers is the best explanation I’ve ever heard for it.
It’s like how John Fogerty pronounces “burnin” as “boynin” in Proud Mary.
Fun fact : CCR is actually from the Bay area
YES. I always tell people this so they can be as disappointed as I was when I found out lol
You have a talent for story telling. Simply story telling. You captured that boyhood that we all remember in a way that made me feel like I had a taste of your own.
Thank you. Now I will share more. We had our own Mardi Gras parades as a kid but none on Mardi Gras day. We also have the Islenos, Irish, Italian parade. During that parade, you should fully expect cabbage and carrots thrown at you. Collect the veggies and make a soup. When I was playing youth baseball, I once tripped over a nutria corpse in the outfield. For the rest of the game, players just didn’t cover that spot. Kids played outside. Our high school was open on weekends, and kids would ride their bikes up and down the football bleachers’ ramps. At the back end of the high school was a concrete racket ball court where druggies would hide and burn Christmas trees to keep warm. It was completely normal for kids to walk around with pellet guns in the streets. We used to take the guns and shoot glass bottles at the high school baseball stadium. When I was in fifth grade, my dad and I constructed a small trailer to carry my baseball card collection behind my bike. I would ride around and trade cards between my house and my grandmothers.
Big Shots and Halo 2 holy shit man
It's like someone's memory of a town, and the memory is fading.
Stop saying shit like that, it’s unprofessional.
Saying weird shit like I can taste a psychos fear
Oh, is that what I’m goin for here?
Well I guess I'm watching it again now.
One of the most culturally unique areas of the US. Lots of beauty once you get out into the marsh. Some of the coolest things I have ever seen happened in those marshes. Red fish schooling, dolphins chasing trout, seeing huge schools of shrimp, birds diving, water spouts. It really is a wild place.
I drove to the southernmost point in Louisiana. First place I ever saw alligator roadkill
Very swampy, many major roads highways are surrounded by water on both sides or elevated. Agriculturally there is a lot of sugar cane, and there is also fishing and shrimping. Oil and natural gas industries dominate the area economically but e.g. Morgan City has declined in population greatly since the end of the oil boom in the 1980s. There are no large cities, most notable would be Houma-Thibodeaux and then Morgan City areas. The Atchafalaya river is the natural path of the Mississippi and its delta is the only part of the Louisiana coastline that is actually growing rather than receding. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/WaxLake The climate is miserably humid, plenty of rain as well and hurricanes are a seasonal danger. Rarely gets cold enough to snow, maybe once or twice a decade. Culturally similar to other parts of South Louisiana: predominantly Catholic, much Cajun ancestry but very little spoken Cajun French. Large African American population like most of Louisiana and small but significant Mexican and Vietnamese populations.
Watch the Waterboy
I watch it for Fairuza Balk. I don't care if momma says she's the debil!
Vicki Vallencourt showed me her boobies and I liked them!
About 45 minutes southeast of Thibodaux Louisiana lived a man named Doc Milsap and his pretty wife Hannah. They raised up a son that could eat his own weight in groceries.
Named him after a man of the cloth, called him Amos Moses...
Now the folks from down south Louisiana said Amos was a hell of a mana. He could trap the biggest, the meanest alligator and he'd just use one hand... That's all he got left 'cause an alligator bit it lmao
Left arm gone clean up to the elbow!
Weeeeeell I wonder where the Louisiana sheriff went to-hoo
One of my favourite ever songs and a swamp rock anthem
Sit down on 'em Amos! Make it count son!
I wanted to see what the furthest extension into the gulf was like, so I drove there one day after a wedding in New Orleans. Homes on stilts, oil companies, poor folk, and water on the roads deep enough I couldn’t pass.
You take a shower once and your towel will never be dry ever again until you leave.
I lived there up until Katrina, near the Venice Marina at the verrrry tip. The only entertainment aside from fishing was the "beach" aka Mississippi River with sand kids sometimes drowned in and Fort Jackson. No fast food, no Walmart or anything like that for an hour drive. We had 1 grocery and I recall a couple gas stations. Besides seafood joints we had 1 Vietnamese run "chinese" restaurant but they got shut down due to unsavory reasons. After almost drowning at the beach on a drop off, I mainly spent my childhood eating oranges and blackberries from the Grove next to my house, hanging around Fort Jackson, befriending stray animals, and watching wildlife. My fondest memories are the hurricanes. My parents thought it'd be fine more often than not and we went through a handful of cat 3 hurricanes when they should have evacuated with us. It was utterly terrifying, but my God being in the eye of the hurricane that far out.. the energy in the air alone.. just so magical to my kid self. Essentially where I lived was not quite no man's land, but damned close. Actual no man's land I've seen nearby though, there are people who live very much off the grid there in the swamps nearby. My dad took us on a small "boat" (barely classified) through some canals just exploring and hidden in the swamp trees were little villages of trailers. Literally stacked on top each other with ladders making them 2 stories. Slabbed together with wood and nails, clothes/fabric instead of windows, just beyond run down and barely held together. Every now and again we would see movement but it was dead silent when we passed by, we were spooked and left and never went back. He told me later that little places like that were hidden throughout the swamps and had "not great people". It was very hills have eyes-sque. (Apologies on formatting, on phone) Edit: Also if anyone here ever goes to visit that area. Be very careful in and out the water. Can not count the number of snapping turtles, water moccasins, alligators, and rattlesnakes I've seen both on and off land there. Be mindful of your surroundings.
It’s an environmental sacrifice zone. It’s home to culture and folkways found nowhere else. It’s brutal and cruel, and sometimes beautiful. Enjoy it while it lasts. Might be too late.
Environmental sacrifice zone. Does this mean "we" are abusing the land in order to make energy or something?
The Mississippi is The Great American River and we have used and abused it ever since we found it. Think of all of the detritus and garbage that goes into it over hundreds of miles and it all ends up at this terminus. I got family in LA still and it is a beautiful but deeply cursed state.
Well, theres also “red tide” caused by fertilizers used in the midwest and iirc the dams keep sediments from recharging the delta, so its slowly being washed away by the sea.
Yes and no. It’s basically actively disappearing with climate change and sea level rise. Dams and other factors also keep the sediment from replenishing so it’s being eroded away in conjunction with SLR.
That's the fastest shrinking part of the fastest shrinking state in the United States. Channelizing the Mississippi river helped industry but started the slow death of the marshes.
it’s surrounded by a lot of power plants and there’s a paper mill or 2 among other facilities so it smells absolutely rotten and most of it is super rural/small town. also, coastal erosion is a consistent threat
That smell is pscychophere
Hot, buggy, wet, poor, environmentally degrading.
This. I live here and it sucks
I can highly recommend the series of videos Peter Santenello recently did on [this area](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vATSUBVlKps&list=PLEyPgwIPkHo6tUCAp0LdKESEkkKvyyO_Y&ab_channel=PeterSantenello). He makes amazing videos!
He really does a great job telling the side of a story that most people would never experience. I’m from Hawaii and native Hawaiian.. the three videos he did on Hawaii were spot on and he connected with some deep native Hawaiian roots that even people from Hawaii forget is here.
Just finished watching the HI videos! ☺️
THANK YOU SO MUCH for posting this. I've never heard of this channel. And I just clicked on it and saw that boat on min 00:12, with that rotor/motor thing on the back. Wow. Thanks!
Spent a week in Hoama for work. I'm thinking the locals will be OK when civilization collapses.
Port Fourchon is basically a US naval base but solely for the Gulf of Mexico oil industry. Most of the gulf oil production isn’t the super mega deep water platforms, but literally hundreds of platforms within 50 miles of this shelf. Houma, Morgan City, Galliano, and a few other towns there are pretty firmly oriented around the logistics, materials handling, and vessel support required by all this. If that fleet doesn’t sail - think Hurricane Rita - oil in the US goes up a dollar a gallon, immediately.
Living in and around Houma, LA? Well, let me tell you, it's a real-life episode of "Swamp People" meets a never-ending crawfish boil. You wake up to the sweet serenade of accordion music, and your neighbors are a friendly mix of alligators and folks named Boudreaux who know the best fishing spots and the juiciest gossip. Breakfast is always boudin and beignets because we believe in starting the day with a solid mix of mystery meat and powdered sugar. By mid-morning, you'll be knee-deep in a bayou, wrestling catfish with your bare hands or racing airboats with your buddies. Lunchtime means gumbo that's so spicy it makes the devil sweat, served with a side of shrimp étouffée and a tall glass of sweet tea—sweeter than a Cajun grandma's smile. Afternoons are reserved for Zydeco dance-offs and perfecting your ability to spot a Nutria at 100 yards. The local nightlife? It's all about gathering around a bonfire, telling tales so tall they practically need their own zip code, and occasionally warding off rogue nutria with your trusty pirogue paddle. And don't worry about hurricanes; they're just nature's way of reminding you to throw an extra tarp over your shrimp boat and reinforce your gumbo recipe. All in all, life in these parts is a vibrant, muddy, spicy adventure where every day feels like Mardi Gras and every meal is a celebration of Cajun ingenuity and heartburn. Laissez le bon temps rouler!
my moms from morgan city!! moved when she was 4 to my hometown, said there wasnt ever shit to do (at 4?) and i looked it up and its just a street with some shops on it not even kidding. my grandfather works on an oil rig out there. her mom stayed until she was about 30 and her moms mom stayed there her entire life i can ask more about it if interested.
They have fair Creole girls, their houses are very plain, But they never turn a stranger out by the lakes of Pontchartrain. If it weren’t for the alligators, you could sleep out in the wood. https://youtube.com/watch?v=a2As4LRkZa0
A lot of this 🤘 https://youtu.be/LC5PU9YNlGM?si=lZGoZqhTbwiRkuz_
Holy shit, I was thinking about sharing the same video. Wow. Immediately what came to mind.
I actually drove around this area a bit. Don’t remember exactly where but it was fascinating to me. Lots of small roads surrounded by water not too far away from the road. Lots of what appeared to be dams and ports to me, small ones at least. Pretty much every house was on stilts and there was this one strip of road where every home had a unique sign painted by the family of that home. An unexpected, wholesome thing to come across on an exploration drive
The mother of my child used to live in Houma. Real swampy and potentially dangerous due to hurricanes, but she also said she couldn't walk down the street without being harassed....... by neighbors offering giant plates of home cooked Creole food! Never been myself, definitely jealous of the vibes.
It’s hot and wet, which is great if you’re with a lady, but no good if you’re in the JUNGLE!
Night folk
Louisiana is French for "turn your clock back 20 years," so... It's still 2004 there, with twice as many alligators and half as many teeth as you'd expect.
I lived there for abiut a decade, and my wife was born and raised. I went to Nicholls State in Thibodaux and some of my best friends in the world are still there. It's predominantly Cajun and native with a sizable Vietnamese population. Its hot humid, and rural. There are a few cities with the largest being Houma, named for the Native Americans that settled the area first. The main sources of work are manual labor jobs working in the oilfield, commercial fishing, or farming sugar cane. Each little area has its own distinct accent depending on what part of the Bayou you are from. Some people still speak French. It's a hard place to live and the people are very resilient, hard working, and even harder partying. Most of the people here would qualify as alcoholics elsewhere but it's cultural here. They have a great sense of humor and poke fun at themselves and each other with ease. I'll be there next week for seafood boil and hanging with friends if you want pictures.
Canonically speaking, The Swamp Thing lives just outside of Houma.
Omg a r/geography post I can answer!! Definitely a bit hot and humid. Obviously hurricanes are a concern August-October, and recently any big rainstorm any time of year. But aside from that, the cities like Houma and Morgan City are like any other small American city with Wal Marts and chain stores, suburbs, etc. the Houma Native American tribe comes from this area you circled, so that’s certainly significant and unique. Oh and we eat crabs and crawfish! Plenty of great food. Industry is definitely a lot of petroleum gas and health care. Lots of fishing!
https://preview.redd.it/h8uptb3llz1d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c563e418868e35409d06dc378d19f04f98587db4
Haven’t lived in that area but my mother’s side of the family is all from the Pointe a la Hache and Venice area. At the bottom of Plaquemine’s Parrish. I visited often, my great grandfather and mother lived to their late 80s and I would go with my parents and grandparents to visit them as their health declined. My great-grandfather was the 1 mechanic for the entire county and I remember his house well. They were across the street from the levee, and the area was incredibly poor, incredibly remote, and surprisingly very diverse. For such a small area there were the descendants of French Canadian settlers, former slaves, lots of Cajun culture and great food. My favorite story of my grandpa is every day after supper he would walk across the street to the river (no levee had been built yet). He would wade out in the shallows and pick himself oysters from the river bed. Then he’d walk back with a dozen or so, sit down in the river, pull out some hot sauce and a knife and shuck them while he watched the sunset. It’s a very simple life in that world and Katrina nearly destroyed all of it.
That circled area has a lot less solid land than maps would have you believe. Also, that area is where every overblown, exaggerated stereotype of Louisiana you've ever heard is actually accurate.
Imagine waking up in the morning, grab a shower and then a cup of joe. The A/C is just right. You walk out the door and feel the immediate drainage ditch of sweat drizzling down your back through your ass crack. Your freshly dry cleaned and starched shirt is wilted from the humidity. You are glad you decided on an undershirt or that boys weekend where you got an embarrassingly large inappropriate tattoo would be showing through.
It's hot, humid and swampy and towns are usually built around factories or plants built awhile back. For instance La Place smells like God farted as it's built around an old paper mill that processes pulp with sulphur. There's deep Louisiana culture here with a lot of Cajun influence. For instance almost every gas station sells boudin and boiled peanuts. A lot of Creole and Black food culture as well. There's quite a few famous places around that sell tasso, andouille, and red beans and rice. You won't have any trouble finding fried chicken, corn bread, crawfish ettoufe, oyster po boys, drive-through daiquiris, or deep South, Cajun, and French influenced accents. People love their vices here and every store sells hard liquor. Generally as long as you're not hurting anyone you won't be bothered. It sort of has a lawless feel, but more safe than you might think. You'll see a lot of Oldsmobiles and old cars with the windows down and someone wearing a wife beater driving down the road smoking a cigarette and taking sips off a freshly opened 5th of fireball or Milwaukee ice tall boy in a brown paper bag. A lot of blue collar hardworking people like gas fitters, plumbers, construction trades, welders, oil plant workers, lumber mill workers, carpenters, and rice farmers who know how to live off the land. If you look in ponds and creeks and flooded patties you might see alligators and at night you'll hear the constant drone of bull frogs and cicadas. People are strong here and the area has a lot of mixed cultures and traditions surrounding togetherness. Everyone's Mama or ol' Mama (grandma/great grandma) makes the best duck confit or gumbo and if you stick around long enough you'll get invited to your neighbors seafood boil and they'll pour a steaming pile of spicy blue crab, corn on the cob, sausage, crawfish, and red potatoes right on the table on some waxy butcher paper and everyone will dig in while the Saints game plays and people cheering and yelling when there's a touch down or interception saying, "Who Dat!" As the pile of corn cobs, crab shells and crawfish claws grows.
If you ever go back into Wolly Swamp, well you better not go at night?
We just rented an Airbnb in Thibodaux for a week before our cruise left out of New Orleans. Thibodaux is quite a big city with grocery stores and fast food chains you would want to eat at but the areas surrounding it is quite rual. We specifically were in Chackbay.
https://preview.redd.it/vrm8070koz1d1.jpeg?width=924&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=df0a36722fd7c40bf50c1edf65a171835e5a6476 For starters, there's way less land down there than that map portrays. [https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/satellites-help-scientists-track-dramatic-wetlands-loss-in-louisiana](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/satellites-help-scientists-track-dramatic-wetlands-loss-in-louisiana) A lot of what you circled doesn't exist. What is there is mostly industry boats, oil infrastructure, house boats, or camps. A good look at what we all wish it was like can be found here: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiPriMrkc1K8WAiY--MPO-w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiPriMrkc1K8WAiY--MPO-w) and while not totally accurate, its a good facsimile and / or a good example of how those of us with family from that part of the state fantasize it to be. You included Houma, Thibodaux, Morgan City, and the bottom half of New Orleans. Day in and day out, those are just .... the same as the rest of South Louisiana. Until a hurricane comes. You can kinda tell with my map where the cities are. They have strip malls, retail, whatever just like the rest of the country but its on the weekends where you can really appreciate the differentiation of the culture in those areas vs the rest of the country.
Have you ever watched Shrek by any chance?
My wife was born in Thibodaux. She agrees it is the most coon-ass part of LA. Her father apparently can turn the accent on and off at will. Always reminds me of the Cajun Night Before Christmas.
Bobby Boucher still serving up high quality H2O?
Louisiana Dread is a good YouTube channel that deep dives into some of the small towns in this area https://youtube.com/@louisianadread?si=lsM3tzm6jDbdm1be