In many ways, LA 1 reflects all of America beyond it. The route traverses numerous, distinct domains, each Louisianian but each decidedly its own. The inhabitants of the timber and oil environs of the northwest share more in common with their fellow cattle ranchers and oilmen in Texas than they do with the Cajuns inhabiting southern LA 1. The shrimpers of the Gulf share more perhaps, with fellow fishermen working the Gulf in Mississippi and Alabama to the east than they do with the sugar cane and chemical plant workers found midway along LA 1.
Different as these distinct sub-locales are, their inhabitants are 100% Louisianian in ways both mundane and profound, in precisely the same way that all Americans, despite their diversity and differences, are each 100% American.
Waiting Room at the Mansura Livestock Auction, Mansura, LA
Starting in the northwest corner of Louisiana – a tri-state area Louisiana forms with Arkansas and Texas – LA 1 begins in oil and timber country. Towering, dense timber forests line the road, periodically punctuated by the bobbing pumpjacks of established wellheads. The feel is decidedly more eastern Texas than the more obvious Louisianan cajun.
Traveling south, the dense timber quickly yields to pecan orchards and cotton fields, with double duty given over to cattle. In this stretch, the oil and gas industry remains. Petroleum wellheads continue to dot the landscape for much of the northern stretch of LA 1, with old wells continuing to produce and new wells – established through hydraulic fracturing – constantly coming on line.
Jason, South of Shreveport, LA
In the midsection of LA 1, in and around the state capital of Baton Rouge, LA 1 proceeds through the disparate businesses of industrial chemical and sugar cane production. At times, the two discordant industries butt-up against each other, occupying adjacent fields to one another.
Ultimately, the chemical industry subsides and the sugar cane fields give way to Gulf of Mexico based industry, in particular, the gulf fishing fleets. These fleets fish in the Gulf of Mexico, where LA 1 reaches its southern terminus, but the boats are docked northward all along the Bayou Laforche, nearly to Baton Rouge itself.
Along its entire length, LA 1 is escorted by a rotating cast of rivers. In the north, it is the fabled Red River – the same high plains sourced Red River of John Wayne and Montgomery Clift fame – that serves as escort. Next, the Cane River assumes the mantle for a short stretch until handing it back once again to the sturdier Red. North of Baton Rouge, LA 1 dashes away from both the Red and Cane Rivers, before bounding over the Cajun waters of the Atchafalaya, and sidling-up to the Mississippi west of Baton Rouge. Finally, diving into Cajun country, LA 1 ribbons south alongside Bayou Lafourche for every inch of that river’s 116 miles, all the way to the shallow start of the Gulf of Mexico.
Tyler and Justin, Golden Meadow, LA
In many ways, LA 1 reflects the larger America beyond it. The route is, by its very denomination, wholly contained within the single state of Louisiana, yet it traverses numerous distinct domains, each Louisianian but each decidedly its own. The inhabitants of the timber and oil environs of the northwest share more in common with their fellow cattle ranchers and oilmen in Texas than they do with the Cajuns inhabiting southern LA 1. The shrimpers of the Gulf share more perhaps, with fellow fishermen working the Gulf in Mississippi and Alabama to the east than they do with the sugar cane and chemical plant workers found midway along LA 1. Distinct worlds embraced by LA 1.
Different as these distinct sub-locales are, their inhabitants are 100% Louisianian in ways both mundane and profound. On the mundane level, they share common license plates and rules of the road. More distinctively, they share a Louisianian legal system peculiar to Louisiana (it is the only state employing “civil code” rather than “common law”). They live not in counties, but in parishes. Deeper still, they share the culture of mardi-gras and cajun inflected food, of zydeco and profoundly rooted jazz. And while not all Louisianians along LA 1 are Cajun or speak Cajun French, the language and its influences – the “lagniappe” and “laissez les bon temps roulez” and “po boy” sandwiches – saturate the land in the south and flavor the north. LA 1 comprises multiple identities that form a singular whole, just like America at large.