Množina: Louisianas

1. A state in southern United States on the Gulf of Mexico; one of the Confederate states during the American Civil War; Also called: Pelican State.
2. City in Missouri (USA); zip code 63353.
State in S US; nicknamed Pelican State.
area 135,900 sq km/52,457 sq mi.
capital Baton Rouge.
towns and cities New Orleans, Shreveport, Lafayette, Lake Charles.
features Mississippi River; Sabine Wildlife Refuge Tower; Cajun country (Acadiana) including St Martinville (the 18th-century “Petit Paris”, with the church of St Martin de Tours and the Petit Paris Museum), and Lafayette (40% of the population speak Cajun French); Poverty Point State Commemorative Area, with prehistoric Native American sites dating from 1800–500 BC; Natchitoches, the oldest permanent European settlement of the Louisiana Purchase; plantation mansions, many designed by Henry Howard, including Nottoway (1859, the largest plantation mansion in the South, with 64 rooms), Madewood, Destrahan Plantation (the oldest surviving plantation in the Mississippi Valley), Rosedown Plantation and Gardens (1835), and Magnolia Mound Plantation; New Orleans, the birthplace of Dixieland jazz, with Mardi Gras celebrations, the French Quarter (Vieux Carre) around Jackson Square (the site of the original colony founded 1718; the only surviving building is the Old Ursuline Convent, 1749), St Louis Cemetery No. 1 (17.
89), Louisiana State Museum, 1850s House, Beauregard-Keyes House (home of novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes), St Louis Cathedral (1794), the Voodoo Museum, and the Garden District with mid-19th-century estates; Jean Lafitte national historic park and preserve; Chalmette national historic park; old houses in St Francisville; the old state capitol, Baton Rouge (1849); Port Hudson State Commemorative Area, site of Civil War battle; Tulane University; Audubon State Commemorative Area, where John James Audubon did most of his “Birds of America” paintings; the American Rose Center, headquarters of the American Rose Society at Shreveport.
industries rice, cotton, sugar, oil, natural gas, chemicals, sulfur, fish and shellfish, salt, processed foods, petroleum products, timber, paper.
; including Cajuns, descendants of 18th-century religious exiles from Canada, who speak a French dialect.
famous people Louis Armstrong, P G T Beauregard, Huey Long.
history explored by the Spanish Piñeda 1519, Cabeza de Vaca 1528, and De Soto 1541 and by the French explorer La Salle 1862, who named it after Louis XIV and claimed it for France. It became Spanish 1762–1800, then French, then passed to the US 1803 under the Louisiana Purchase; admitted to the Union as a state 1812.
The Civil War destroyed the plantation economy. Recovery was slow, but in the 1930s Louisiana became one of the world's major centers of petrochemical manufacturing, based on oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

Množina: Louisiana Purchases

Purchase by the US from France 1803 of an area covering about 2,144,000 sq km/828,000 sq mi, including the present-day states of Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Oklahoma.
The purchase, which doubled the size of the US, marked the end of Napoleon's plans for a colonial empire and ensured free navigation on the Mississippi River for the US.
President Thomas Jefferson, fearing that the French (having just acquired New Orleans from the Spanish) might restrict American access to the Mississippi, offered $10 million for the area to Napoleon, who initially refused. Faced with an impending war with Britain and reverses in his colonial campaigns, the French emperor then offered to sell the entire territory for $15 million. Jefferson's special emissary, James Monroe, agreed to the purchase, but Jefferson was concerned that he lacked the authority, under the US Constitution, for such an agreement. Although he was eager to seek Congressional assent, Jefferson was forced to act on his own initiative since Napoleon grew impatient, and Secretary of State James Madison completed the negotiation 1803.

Množina: Louisianans

A resident of Louisiana; Also called: Louisianian.