Terrebonne Parish

Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana
Terrebonne Parish Courthouse
Location in the U.S. state of Louisiana
Louisiana's location in the U.S.
Founded	March 22, 1822
Named for	terre bonne, French for good earth
Seat	Houma
Largest city	Houma
Area
• Total	2,080 sq mi (5,387 km2)
• Land	1,232 sq mi (3,191 km2)
• Water	850 sq mi (2,201 km2), 41%
Population (est.)
• (2015)	113,972
• Density	91/sq mi (35/km²)
Congressional districts	1st, 6th
Time zone	Central: UTC-6/-5
Website	www.tpcg.org

Terrebonne Parish (/ˌtɛrəˈboʊn/ TERR-ə-BOHN; French: Paroisse Terrebonne) is a parish located in the southern part of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 111,860. The parish seat is Houma. The parish was founded in 1822.

Terrebonne Parish is part of the Houma-Thibodaux, LA Metropolitan Statistical Area.

It is the second-largest parish in the state in terms of land area, and it has been a center of Cajun culture since the 18th century. More than 10% of its residents speak French at home.

Ray Authement, the fifth president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, from 1974 to 2008 and the longest-serving president of a public university in the United States, was born in rural Terrebonne Parish, near Chauvin, in 1928.

Houma was named after the Houma people. The native word houma means red, and the tribe's war emblem was the crawfish. Historians say the Houma were related to the Muskogean-speaking Choctaw, and migrated into the area from present-day Mississippi and Alabama. They first settled near what is now Baton Rouge. After many conflicts with other Indian tribes, and losing a war to the Tunica in 1706, to escape the encroachment of Europeans, the Houma Indians continued moving south to more remote areas in the bayous. They settled in present-day Terrebonne Parish in the mid- to late 18th century. They established a camp known as Ouiski Bayou on the high ground northwest of what later developed as downtown Houma. They were subsequently pushed from the highlands of the north to the coastal regions of the south by the European settlements in the late 1700s and 1800s. Evidence of the Houma Tribe can still be found in this area today.