Baton Rouge is Louisiana's 2nd largest city, as well as it's capital. Steeped in history, the city has had the flags of seven nations flown over it: France, England, Spain, West Florida, Sovereign State of Louisiana, the Confederacy, and the United States. Despie all tbhis, the original name bestowed by a French explorer in 1699 has remained. It means a "red stick" or "red staff" and referred to a tall cypress tree stripped of it's bark, and draped with the blood of freshly killed animals that marked the boundry between the hunting grounds of two Indian tribes. It became the state capital in 1849, and has a population of around 250,000 in 1996.
Baton Rouge is one of the largest ports in the nation, and is at the northern end of the "petrochemical Gold Coast", the industrial belt that flanks the Mississippi for 100 miles down river to New orleans. Across the river from baton Rouge are great sugar plantions that form an area well known as "the Sugar Bowl of America". The area has many magnolia and cypress trees, as well as antebellum homes. The area is home to two major universities, as well as a number of memorials and museums.
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