List of plantations in Louisiana
This is a list of plantations and/or plantation houses in the U.S. state of Louisiana that are National Historic Landmarks, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, listed on a heritage register; or are otherwise significant for their history, their association with significant events or people, or their architecture and design.
Upland or green seeded cotton was not a commercially important crop until the invention of an improved cotton gin in 1793. With an inexpensive cotton gin a man could remove seed from as much cotton in one day as a woman could de-seed in two months working at a rate of about one pound per day. The newly mechanized cotton industry in England during the Industrial Revolution absorbed the tremendous supply of cheap cotton that became a major crop in the Southern U.S.
At the time of the cotton gin’s invention, the sub tropical soils in the Eastern U.S. were becoming depleted, and the fertilizer deposits of guano deposits of South America and the Pacific Islands along with the nitrate deposits in the Chilean deserts were not yet being exploited, meaning that there were fertilizer shortages, leading to a decline in agriculture in the Southeast and a westward expansion to new land.
Transportation at the time was extremely limited. There were almost no improved roads in the U.S. or in the Louisiana Territory and the first railroads were not built until the 1830s. The only practical means for shipping agricultural products more than a few miles without exceeding their value was by water. This made much of the land in the U.S. unsuitable for growing crops other than for local consumption.
Under ownership of Spain, New Orleans held the strategically important location between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. The Carondelet Canal, which was completed in 1794, connected the Tremé section of New Orleans with Bayou St. John, giving shipping access to Lake Pontchartrain as an alternative route to the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. gained rights to use the New Orleans port in 1795. See: New Orleans#History
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