Cameron Parish, Louisiana
| Cameron Parish, Louisiana | |
|---|---|
 Location in the U.S. state of Louisiana |
|
 Louisiana's location in the U.S. |
|
| Founded | 1870 |
| Named for | Simon Cameron |
| Seat | Cameron |
| Largest community | Cameron |
| Area | |
| • Total | 1,937 sq mi (5,017 km2) |
| • Land | 1,285 sq mi (3,328 km2) |
| • Water | 652 sq mi (1,689 km2), 34% |
| Population (est.) | |
| • (2015) | 6,817 |
| • Density | 5/sq mi (2/km²) |
| Congressional district | 3rd |
| Time zone | Central: UTC-6/-5 |
| Website | www |
Cameron Parish (French: Paroisse de Cameron) is a parish in the southwestern section of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 6,839. The parish seat is Cameron. Although it is the third-largest parish by land area in Louisiana, it has the second-smallest population in the state.
Cameron Parish is part of the Lake Charles, Metropolitan Statistical Area.
This was part of La Louisiane, colonized by the French beginning in the 17th and early 18th century. They encountered the Attakapa and Choctaw indigenous peoples, who had occupied this area for thousands of years.
In the late 1700s, after France had ceded New France (Canada) and other holdings east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain following its defeat in 1763 in the Seven Years' War, a number of French-speaking refugee families from Acadia settled in this part of coastal Louisiana. Some had fought against the British with Indian allies during the war in Acadia. Among them were Joseph “Beausoleil” Broussard, his brothers Alexander and Pierre, and their wives and families, who first went to Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) before settling in Louisiana. The British expelled many Acadians for their resistance, particularly their refusal to make loyalty oaths to Great Britain. Numerous other French-speaking families settled here and their descendants populate the smaller towns.
In the 18th century France ceded its holdings in Louisiana and other areas west of the Mississippi River to Spain, and the Spanish colonial government made grants of land to the Acadians. France took control of this territory again at the turn of the nineteenth century for a short period under Napoleon Bonaparte. But in 1803 he sold all the French territory west of the Mississippi River to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. The US was particularly intent on getting control of New Orleans, an important part for its large agricultural interests in what is now the Midwest.
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