Louisiana Files #002 Many people call every body of water in Louisiana a "bayou." But bayous, swamps, and marshes aren't the same thing. A bayou is a slow-moving waterway, often winding through forests and wetlands. A swamp is a forest that stays flooded for much of the year, filled with towering cypress trees and hanging Spanish moss. A marsh is open wetland dominated by grasses instead of trees. The Atchafalaya Basin, stretching across south-central Louisiana, is the larges

Louisiana Files #001 Louisiana Doesn't Have Counties If you're new to Louisiana, one of the first things you'll notice is that we don't have counties. We have parishes. The name dates back to Louisiana's French and Spanish colonial history, when the Catholic Church divided communities into ecclesiastical parishes. When Louisiana became a U.S. territory and later a state, those parish boundaries gradually became the basis for local government. Today, Louisiana remains the only