Region One: The Land and Its People
Louisiana Office of Tourism Photo
From a birds-eye view, the wetlands of Region One form a narrow ring around the set of three immense lakes that make up the largest estuarine complex of the Gulf Coast. Stretching between the lakes, like fragile green threads, are the region's remaining marshes and cypress swamps.
Out in the Gulf of Mexico, the thin line of the Chandeleur barrier islands marks the easternmost remnant of this ancient and abandoned delta of the Mississippi, most of which has subsided beneath the waters. The remaining 483,390 acres of rapidly disappearing wetlands lie behind the barrier islands, line the lakeshores, constitute the land bridges between the lakes and form the upper basin swamps.
 South shore of Lake Pontchartrain at the Causeway Bridge in Metairie. US Army Corps of Engineers |
Contained within the 1.7-million-acre Pontchartrain Drainage Basin, Region One is bounded by continental uplands on the north and west, by the Chandeleur Islands on the east and by the Mississippi River and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet on the south. The region covers portions of 10 Louisiana parishes: Ascension, Jefferson, Livingston, Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St. John the Baptist, St. Tammany and Tangipahoa. Because lakes Maurepas, Pontchartrain and Borgne cover 55 percent of its area, Region One holds the most open water and the least amount of wetlands of all the coastal regions in southern Louisiana.
Louisiana Office of Tourism Photo
Once a wet wilderness between the Mississippi River and the uplands to the north, inhabited solely by the Muskhogee group of Native Americans, the area was explored by the French in 1682. Soon after that trade goods were being shipped from the Gulf through the three lakes, laboriously carried up the Amite River and then transported overland to the Mississippi at Baton Rouge. Needing a shorter route to the big river, the French settled New Orleans in 1718, choosing the only "high ground" adjacent to the Mississippi, a mere 14 feet above sea level. Here goods could be unloaded and stored without danger of immediate flooding, and here a fort could be built to protect access to the river and the interior of the continent. Since then the city's history has dominated the region, blending a rich culture defined by the diverse French, Spanish, African and English people who came to this land.
 Louisiana Office of Tourism Photo |
When non-native people, however, think of this area, New Orleans jazz, Cajun cooking and Mardi Gras overshadow Region One's tremendous economic importance to the entire nation. The riverside docks from New Orleans to Baton Rouge constitute the largest port in the nation, handling almost 375 million tons of shipping in the year 2000. The petrochemical and other heavy industries situated along the Mississippi River, the tourism, forestry and agriculture, fishing and trapping are also vital to the economic health of the region.
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