Louisiana is a constituent state of the United States of America. The state is delineated from its neighbours—Arkansas to the north, Mississippi to the east, and Texas to the west—by both natural and man-made boundaries. The Gulf of Mexico lies to the south. The 47,752 square miles (123,678 square kilometres) of Louisiana include more than 3,000 square miles of inland waters. The capital is Baton Rouge. With parts of its land lying farther south than any portion of the continental United States except for southern Texas and the Florida peninsula, and with New Orleans, its largest city, lying on roughly the same parallel as Cairo, New Delhi, and Shanghai, Louisiana owes much of its complex personality to its geographic position.
Admitted to the Union in 1812 as the 18th state, Louisiana commands a once strategically vital region where the waters of the great Mississippi–Missouri river system, draining the continental interior of North America, flow out into the warm, northward-curving crescent of the Gulf of Mexico. It is not surprising that seven flags have flown over its territories since 1682, when the explorer Robert Cavelier, Lord de La Salle, placed a wooden cross in the ground and claimed the territory in the name of France's Louis XIV. The consequent varieties of cultural heritage run like bright threads through many of the aspects—social, political, and artistic—of life in the state.
The subtropical climate of the state has provided the magnificent, brooding scenery of the coastal bayous, and the lush, dank vegetation of its shores conceals a wealth of oil. The fertile soil covering much of the terrain made Louisiana a rich agricultural area by 1860, with sugarcane and cotton plantations flourishing. A lumbering boom occurred at the turn of the 20th century, and Louisiana underwent rapid industrialization after World War II. Mineral output is great, and the state ranks among the nation's leaders in petroleum production.
Louisiana shares the general physiographic characteristics common to the Gulf Coast states of the southern United States, with the vital exception of the Mississippi River, which flows through the state and extends its delta far into the Gulf of Mexico. The changing course of this great North American river has created the huge Atchafalaya basin and has dumped tons of sediment along the coast. Despite this, it has been estimated that the beachless coastline of Louisiana is eroding at a rate of about 16 square miles per year because the system of levees, or embankments, constructed by the federal government to keep the Mississippi in a central channel, has left side channels open to erosion.
Louisiana has shared the economic underdevelopment afflicting Southern states. Prior to 1941 nearly one-third of the labour force was employed in the primary industries, based on raw materials, while only one-fifth worked in the secondary sectors of mining, building, and manufacturing. Such an imbalance depressed personal income per capita, which, until 1930, was but slightly more than half of the national figure. World War II hastened the industrial growth of Louisiana to the extent that the numbers of the labour force engaged in manufacturing increased considerably. The most important development has been the establishment of a chemical industry, based on the oil, sulfur, salt, and water that are found in the area. An investment boom occurred from 1947 to 1957 when the first big move to offshore petroleum production was made.
Tourism has developed as an important industry using the appeal of the antebellum past and the attraction of Creole cuisine, a blend of French, Spanish, black, and Indian dishes. A series of parades and balls culminating in Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday) has become a national attraction in New Orleans. There are many public parks and gardens, and the state is advertised as a sportsman's paradise for hunting and fishing.
Louisiana's waterways have always been an important means of transportation. The state's 4,800–7,500 miles (7,680–12,000 kilometres) of navigable waterways include the Intracoastal Waterway. It is Louisiana's only east–west waterway and canal system and runs some 310 miles from Mississippi Sound to the Sabine River. It is part of a larger waterway extending from the Caloosahatchee River in Florida to Brownsville, Texas. The port of New Orleans is ranked second in the nation in volume of seaborne freight, while Baton Rouge, farther up the Mississippi River at the head of deep-channel navigation, is important for shipping of petroleum and chemical products, including aluminum, and grain. Louisiana has some 180 airports, and New Orleans International Airport, a leading continental link, is a major point of connection with Latin America.
