Louisiana

Louisiana is built almost entirely of river. For thousands of years the Mississippi has dumped its sediment here on its way to the Gulf of Mexico, raising a vast, flat delta of bayous, swamps, and marsh that makes up the southern third of the state. It is the lowest and wettest of the Gulf states, with much of New Orleans sitting below sea level behind levees. The north rises into low rolling hills and pine forest, but water — fresh, brackish, and salt — defines the place.

The delta is one of the most productive and most fragile landscapes in the country. Its wetlands shelter fisheries, refineries, and the busy ports of the lower Mississippi, yet they are vanishing fast, losing land to subsidence, sea-level rise, and the very levees that protect the cities. Driskill Mountain, the high point, reaches a mere 535 feet (163 m). The combination of river, swamp, and Gulf has shaped a culture — Cajun and Creole, French and Spanish, African and American — as distinctive as the geography that produced it.