225 Area Code 🌍☎️

Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana, is located on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River and had a population of 227,470 in the 2020 census, making it the state's second-largest city and the center of Greater Baton Rouge's 870,569-person metropolitan area. Situated on the Istrouma Bluff, the first natural bluff upriver from the Mississippi Delta, the city developed as a strategic business hub protected from seasonal flooding and has been ruled by six different nations including France, Spain, Britain, and the United States. The city is a major industrial and petrochemical center in the Southern United States, home to Louisiana State University and Southern University, the flagship of the nation's only historically black college system. The Port of Greater Baton Rouge ranks as the tenth-largest in the United States by tonnage and serves as the farthest upstream Mississippi River port capable of handling Panamax ships, supporting major corporations including ExxonMobil, Shell, Dow Chemical Company, and Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers. Baton Rouge developed as a multicultural center settled by European immigrants and African peoples, practicing diverse religious traditions and serving as a hub for petrochemical, medical, research, and technology industries throughout the region. Gonzales is a city in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, with a 2020 census population of 12,231, located in the fertile Mississippi River region. Known as the "Jambalaya Capital of the World," the city hosts an annual Jambalaya Festival that began in 1968, a designation proclaimed by Governor John J. McKeithen. The settlement originated from French and Spanish settlers who arrived in the area during Governor Luis de Unzaga's tenure (1769-1777), with the community formally named after "Big" José Gonzáles, elected sheriff in 1886, and his son Joseph "Tee-Joe" Gonzales, who established the town's post office in 1887. Gonzales was officially incorporated as a village in 1922, elevated to town status in 1952 under Governor Earl K. Long, and chartered as a city in 1977 following industrial growth in the region. The city gained national prominence in 2005 when it served as the primary search and rescue headquarters and animal shelter following Hurricane Katrina's destruction. Donaldsonville, the parish seat of Ascension Parish located on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Louisiana's Baton Rouge metropolitan area, had a population of 6,695 at the 2020 census. Originally named Lafourche-des-Chitimachas by French colonists and renamed in 1806 after planter William Donaldson, the city served as Louisiana's capital from 1829 to 1831 and boasts a historic district with the finest collection of antebellum buildings of any Louisiana river town above New Orleans. During the Civil War, Union forces under Admiral David G. Farragut bombarded and occupied the city beginning in 1862, during which Fort Butler was successfully defended on June 28, 1863, in one of the first battles where free blacks and fugitive slaves fought as Union soldiers. After the war, Donaldsonville made history in 1868 when residents elected Pierre Caliste Landry, an attorney and Methodist minister, as the first African American mayor in the United States. The city's economy was historically built on sugar and cotton plantations worked by enslaved labor, which generated the wealth that funded the construction of the antebellum mansions and buildings that define its character today.