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Louisiana Counties

Complete list of all 64 parishes in Louisiana with population, area, median income, and county seats — plus a free printable blank map.

Parishes
64
Population
4,611,457
Area
42,579 sq mi
Capital
Baton Rouge
Time Zone
Central (CT)
Labeled map of Louisiana parishes

Labeled outline map of Louisiana parishes. Download a printable version in SVG, PNG, or PDF.

All 64 Louisiana parishes

County County Seat Population Area Median Income Cities
East Baton Rouge451,022455 mi²$65,9125
Jefferson430,920296 mi²$64,93110
Orleans371,853169 mi²$59,6931
St. Tammany272,334846 mi²$83,09912
Lafayette249,293269 mi²$72,2837
Caddo232,773879 mi²$53,82513
Calcasieu187,5171,064 mi²$71,2848
Ouachita151,402610 mi²$55,4865
Tangipahoa144,482791 mi²$58,40214
Livingston143,052648 mi²$79,8279
Ascension131,228290 mi²$94,31710
Bossier126,861840 mi²$70,0387
Rapides126,2811,318 mi²$56,67221
Terrebonne106,7301,232 mi²$66,1349
Lafourche95,7421,068 mi²$62,80211

How many parishes does Louisiana have?

Louisiana uses the term "parish" instead of "county" — the only US state to do so. The term was inherited from the state's French and Catholic colonial period, when ecclesiastical parishes served as local administrative units. Today Louisiana's 64 parishes are functionally identical to counties in every other state.

The largest parish by land area is Vernon Parish at 1,328 square miles, home to about 46,704 residents. The most populous is East Baton Rouge Parish with approximately 451,022 residents — a density of about 991 people per square mile.

At the other end of the scale, Tensas Parish has only about 3,935 residents.

Louisiana’s capital is Baton Rouge, while the largest city is New Orleans — a common pattern in the United States, where many states placed their capitals in smaller, more central towns rather than their largest commercial hubs.

Related resources

Download a printable outline of Louisiana’s parish boundaries from our blank map of Louisiana page — available in SVG, PNG, and PDF.

Use the What County Am I In? tool to detect which Louisiana parish a GPS location or address falls in, or the Address to County Lookup for batch input.

For demographic radius analysis, the Find ZIP Codes in Radius and Population Within Radius tools let you draw a circle around any Louisiana address and see every ZIP code and the total population inside.

Two SimpleMapLab studies cover Louisiana specifically: the 100-mile radius around Baton Rouge measures how much of the state lives within 100 miles of its capitol, and the loneliest town in Louisiana ranks the state’s most isolated inhabited place. The county-counts blog post puts Louisiana’s 64 parishes in national context.

Frequently asked questions

Louisiana uses the term "parish" instead of "county" — the only US state to do so. The term was inherited from the state's French and Catholic colonial period, when ecclesiastical parishes served as local administrative units. Today Louisiana's 64 parishes are functionally identical to counties in every other state.
Vernon Parish is the largest by land area at 1,328 square miles, with about 46,704 residents.
East Baton Rouge Parish is the most populous, with approximately 451,022 residents over 455 square miles.
Tensas Parish has the smallest population at about 3,935 residents.
Baton Rouge is the state capital. The largest city is New Orleans — a common pattern in the US, where many states placed their capitals in smaller, more central towns rather than their largest commercial hubs.
Population, area, and demographic figures are aggregated from ZIP-code-level US Census data (via the SimpleMaps dataset) and the US Census Gazetteer. County boundaries used to render the map are from the US Atlas TopoJSON build of the Census Bureau's TIGER/Line shapefiles. The data is public domain.
Data sources

Population and demographics are aggregated from ZIP-code-level US Census data via the SimpleMaps dataset. Parishesboundaries are from the US Atlas TopoJSON build of the Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line shapefiles. Land area is from the Census Gazetteer. State counts follow the US Census Bureau’s definition of counties and county-equivalents (50 states + DC = 3,143). All sources are public domain.

Neighboring states