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Welcome!
Tucked between the swamps of the Atchafalaya and the bustling state capitol of Baton Rouge is a parish rich with legend and mystery, where tales of survival and triumph are central to its core. It is Iberville, a parish of awe-inspiring beauty – of magnificent antebellum homes and massive live oaks, of meandering bayous and waterways teeming with life.
It is a parish embracing restoration revival with historic buildings glistening throughout downtown Plaquemine. It is a parish of a people strong and resilient from life’s challenges, yet, oh so friendly. It is a parish proud of the role it has played in helping south Louisiana thrive for over 200 years. There is in Iberville a sense of history, a sense of grace and beauty, a sense of purpose and place, and most of all, a joie de vivre that we’re glad to share.
Iberville was “discovered” by French explorer Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur d’Iberville in 1699, but its rich delta soil and many waterways had been discovered by Indian tribes long before Iberville ever set foot here. While it was initially an agricultural area, Iberville has changed through the centuries to accommodate the changing times. You’ll still see plenty of sugarcane and soybean fields in Iberville, but through the years the hardwood timber industry, river commerce and now industrial development have been essential to a thriving parish economy.
From the 1800s until the mid-1900s, Louisiana produced more sugar than any other state in the nation, and Iberville, as the state’s leading sugarcane producer, drew the name “Sweet Iberville.” By the late 1800s Bayou Plaquemine, running through the heart of Iberville, became the most common route from the Mississippi River into the interior of Louisiana, and this water traffic brought a boom in the parish’s timber and sawmill industries and a variety of commercial establishments catering to travelers. It also resulted in the construction of the historic Plaquemine Lock.
With the agricultural, timber, sawmill, and water commerce industries powering the economy, Iberville prospered into the 1960s, when the Lock was finally closed, replaced by a bigger structure closer to Baton Rouge. But by this time the chemical industry had realized the many advantages that Iberville offered with its access to the Mississippi River, interstate travel, electrical power and hard-working people.
Today, the chemical and agriculture industries power the economy, and exist in harmony with the tourism industry. Among its many attractions are the magnificent Nottoway Plantation, the largest remaining plantation home in the South; the historic Plaquemine Lock, with its unique Dutch-influenced architecture and gleaming white tile exterior; the majestic St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, with its marble altar and intricate stained glass; beautifully restored historic buildings and quaint towns intermingling with the natural beauty of our bayous, massive oaks and cypress trees. Amidst all this is the 800,000 acre Atchafalaya Basin teeming with wildlife, and the mystique of the old Gillis Long Hansen’s Disease Center, a “prison” of sorts for lepers in the early 1900s which later became world renowned for its excellent care and medical breakthroughs.
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