The Acadians who followed Bayou Lafourche south starting in 1765 did what people do when they find a waterway that runs all the way to the sea: they built along it. Narrow-fronted lots, deep back fields, houses strung on both banks for 106 miles from Donaldsonville to where the road runs out of ground — nineteenth-century writers called it the longest street in the world, and the Cajuns still do. In 1904 the bayou was cut off from the Mississippi to prevent flooding; it runs on pumped water now, but the towns it feeds — Thibodaux, Lockport, Galliano, Cut Off, Golden Meadow, Leeville — are still strung like beads on both banks. Drive Highway 1 south and watch the land narrow, the marsh move in, the Gulf take over. The Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center in Thibodaux names what that drive passes through: a bayou Cajun culture distinct from the prairie version, built on water, still here.
