Lake Charles Louisiana

Creole and Cajun Traditions Mardi Gras and a Pirate Festival

Lake Charles, also known as Port of Jean Lafitte, River Lafitte and Charleston, was founded by merchants and tradesmen as an outpost. Located on a level plain about 30 miles (48 km) from the Gulf of Mexico with an elevation of 13 feet (4.0 m) on the banks of the Calcasieu River in Southwestern Louisiana, it borders Lake Charles, Prien Lake, Henderson, English and Contraband Bayou.

Creole and Cajun Traditions the local culture includes the Lake Charles Symphony, founded in 1938, that hosts concerts at the Rosa Hart Theatre and the Lake Charles Little Theatre. The Imperial Calcasieu Museum features a permanent historical exhibit with artifacts, an art gallery and is home to the 400 years old Sallier oak tree. Historic City Hall Arts and Cultural Center hosts the Charlestown Farmers' Market and the USS Orleck Naval Museum, located in North Lake Charles is a Veterans memorial and museum. 

Historical Charpentier District is named for the carpenter-architects who built the mixed-style homes in the district. It features the Black Heritage Art Gallery, which is on the Louisiana African American Trail and the Mardi Gras Museum of Imperial Calcasieu with the largest collection of Mardi Gras memorabilia in the South.

The Louisiana Pirate Festival is a twelve-day annual festival held during the first two weeks of May. The celebrations are filled with savory Cajun food, family fun, and live entertainment. Following the legend of piracy on the lake and Contraband Bayou, the festival begins with pirate Jean Lafitte and his crew capturing the city and forcing the mayor to walk the plank.

Ocean-going Ships Sail from the Gulf of Mexico via the Calcasieu Ship Channel

The Port of Lake Charles is the thirteenth-busiest in the United States, the fourth-largest liner service seaport in the U.S. Gulf, and a major West Gulf container load center. The Calcasieu Ship Channel provides direct access to the Gulf of Mexico 34 miles (55 km) downstream. The ship channel intersects the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway just north of Calcasieu Lake.

Public Transportation Lake Charles Transit provides five bus routes throughout the city which is also served by an intercity bus station and Amtrak’s Sunset Limited train route.

Industry petrochemical plants, an oil refinery and facilities for LNG receipt, storage, and re-gasification are located along the Calcasieu Ship Channel. Local industry also includes companies which services airplanes and a facility which manufactures and exports parts for nuclear power plants.

Commerce Lake Charles serves as the shopping and retail hub for a five-parish area. The Cottage Shop District is home to a dozen small businesses and the L’Auberge du Lac Casino offers upscale boutiques.

Muscatine Iowa

a commercial industrial network pearl of the Mississippi and watermelon capital

Muscatine is situated on a series of bluffs and hills at a west-south bend in the Mississippi River. The river-bend gives the city roughly 260 degrees of riverfront with two creeks flowing into the Mississippi in downtown Muscatine. From the bluffs there is a beautiful view of the town below and of the Mississippi for miles up and down.  Located 25 miles (40 km) from the Quad Cities, 38 miles (61 km) from Iowa City and 68 miles (109 km) from Cedar Rapids, Muscatine is part of a larger community whose residents commute for work.

Muscatine Island is home to working-class neighborhoods and industrial areas

Transport Muscatine is located along two designated routes of Iowa's Commercial-Industrial Network; Highway 61 serves as a major agricultural-industry route to the south from Burlington to Muscatine, where it becomes a heavy-industrial and major commuter route to the northeast between Muscatine and Davenport; highway 61 serves as a shortcut for traffic from northeastern Missouri and southeastern Iowa to the Quad Cities, Chicago, and points beyond. Iowa 92 provides access to the Avenue of the Saints to the west and western Illinois via the Norbert Beckey Bridge to the east.

History Muscatine began as a trading post. The name may have been derived from the Mascoutin Native American tribe who lived along the Mississippi in the 1700s. From the 1840s to the Civil War, Muscatine had Iowa's largest black community; fugitive slaves who traveled the Mississippi from the South and free blacks who had migrated from the eastern states.

Mark Twain lived here during the summer of 1855 while working at the Muscatine Journal

Town Slogans include Pearl of the Mississippi and Pearl Button Capital of the World, referring to when pearl button manufacturing by the McKee Button Company was a significant economic contributor and Weber & Sons Button Co was the world's largest producer of fancy freshwater pearl buttons harvested from the Mississippi River. Muscatine is also known as the Watermelon Capital of the World, reflecting the agricultural and rural nature of the area.

Lafayette Louisiana

history geography local culture and transport services

History the Attakapas Native Americans inhabited this area when French colonists founded the first European settlement, Petit Manchac, a trading post. In the late eighteenth century, numerous Acadian refugees settled here after being expelled from Canada; intermarriage led to the Cajun culture which fostered the French language and the Catholic religion. Vermilionville was renamed in 1884 for General Lafayette, the French aristocrat who aided the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. The city and parish economy continued to be based on agriculture into the early 20^th century. In the 1940s, after oil was discovered in the parish, oil and natural gas became dominant.

Lafayette lies along the Vermilion River in SW Louisiana; its nickname is The Hub City

Geography Lafayette is located on the Western rim of the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest wetland and swamp in the United States where, during the Quaternary Period, the Mississippi River cut a 325-foot-deep (99 m) valley between what is now Lafayette and Baton Rouge. The southwestern Louisiana Prairie Terrace does not suffer significant flooding, outside of local flash flooding.

Local Cultural Organizations include the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra and Conservatory of Music, Chorale Acadienne, Lafayette Ballet Theatre and Dance Conservatory, The Lafayette Concert Band, and Performing Arts Society of Acadiana; as well as the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum and the Acadiana Center for the Arts.

Lafayette is the Center of Acadiana Louisiana’s Cajun and Creole Culture

Transport Lafayette Regional Airport (LFT) is located on the southeast side of the city with daily scheduled passenger airline services to Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, and Atlanta. Charter services depart Lafayette Regional as well as helicopter services and cargo jets.

Amtrak’s Sunset Limited offers service three days a week from New Orleans and Los Angeles with selected stops in Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Intercity passenger bus service is via Greyhound that operates a Station Downtown and Lafayette Transit System provides bus service within Lafayette City Limits.

The Lafayette MPO Bicycle Subcommittee has developed long-term goals for bicycling and Bike Lafayette, the local bicycle advocacy organization, actively promotes bicycle awareness, safety, and education in Acadiana. TRAIL promotes bicycling, canoeing, and pedestrian activities.

Jasper Indiana

German Festivals Wood Capital and Historic Commercial Buildings

Jasper is strategically located one-hour northeast of Evansville, 2 1/2 hours southwest of Indianapolis, 1 1/2 hours west of Louisville and 3 hours east of St. Louis, this community is consistently ranked among the best small towns to live in Indiana and the United States, start a business as well as one of the safest.  The Wood Capital of the World is home to many furniture companies and the Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame, which honors players and others associated with the national pastime who were born or lived in Indiana.

The Jasper post office has been in operation since 1832

The Jasper Strassenfest is a celebration between Jasper and its German sister-city Pfaffenweiler, a small village in southwest Germany; the four-day event is held annually during the first weekend in August. Visitors from Germany travel to Jasper around this time of year. The street festival encompasses the entire city square, complete with food stands, rides, a Biergarten and over 1,300 pounds of bratwurst. The Strassenfest culminates in a Sunday parade and evening fireworks. The festival also features a golf tournament, beauty pageant, box parade, fishing tournament, and a network of German Polka Masses at the three Roman Catholic parishes: St. Joseph's, Holy Family, and Precious Blood.

Louis H. Sturm Hardware Store is a historic commercial building built about 1850; the three-story, three bay, Italianate style brick building houses the oldest continuously operated commercial retail business in Jasper.

Environment the 75-acre central park features two miles of trails, 25 acres of woods and wetlands utilized for nature studies as well as an indoor public event space, musical playground and four exercise pods.

Billings Montana

 Crow Indians Settlers Oil Discovery Microbreweries and a Heritage Trail

Billings is the largest city in Montana and is located in the south-central portion of the state. With the Bakken oil development in eastern Montana and western North Dakota, the largest oil discovery in U.S. history, as well as the Heath shale oil discovery, the city's growth rate stayed high during the shale oil boom. Nicknamed the Magic City because of its rapid growth from its founding as a railroad town in March 1882. It is named for Frederick H. Billings. Billings is the trade and distribution center for much of Montana east of the Continental Divide, Northern Wyoming, and western portions of North and South Dakota. Billings is also the retail destination for much of the same area. With more hotel accommodations than any area within a five-state region, the city hosts a variety of conventions, concerts, sporting events, and other rallies.

The downtown area and much of the rest of Billings is in the Yellowstone Valley which is a canyon carved out by the Yellowstone River.

The Crow Indians have called the Billings area home since about 1700

Settlers from the Gallatin Valley area of the Montana Territory formed Coulson the first town of the Yellowstone Valley. The town was started when John Alderson built a sawmill and convinced PW McAdow to open a general store and trading post on land that Alderson owned on the bank of the Yellowstone River. Before the railroad, most goods coming to and going from the Montana Territory were carried on paddle riverboats. When the railroad came to the area, they established the new town of Billings; for a short-time the two towns were linked with a trolley service.

Coulson was a rough town of dance halls and saloons and not a single church

Downtown Billings is a blend of small businesses and office space, together with restaurants and a walkable brewery district. With eight microbreweries, Billings has more breweries than any community in Montana. Downtown Billings also has a distillery that makes a variety of handcrafted spirits. Babcock Theater is a 750-seat performing arts theater built in 1907 and at the time was considered the largest theater between Minneapolis and Seattle.    

Neighborhoods are at the heart of Billings. The south side is probably the oldest residential area in the city, and it is the most culturally diverse neighborhood. South Park is an old growth City park, host to several food fairs and festivals in the summer months. The Bottom Westend Historic District is home to many of Billings first mansions. Midtown is undergoing gentrification and new growth is mainly concentrated on the West End.

MET Transit provides fixed-route and para transit bus service. All MET buses are accessible by citizens who use wheelchairs and other mobility devices. They are wheelchair lift-equipped and accessible to all citizens who are unable to use the stairs. MET buses are equipped with bike racks for their bike-riding passengers.

The Heritage Trail System has well-maintained trails and pathways

Around Billings, there are seven mountain ranges, including the Bighorn and Pryor Mountains, home the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range.

Cape Girardeau Missouri

river trade steamboats trading posts bridges murals and historic sites

Cape Girardeau is named after Jean Baptiste de Girardot, who established a trading post in the area around 1733. As early as 1765, a bend in the Mississippi River, had been referred to as Cape Girardot or Girardeau.  In 1799, American settlers founded the first English school west of the Mississippi at a landmark called Mount Tabor, named by the settlers for the Biblical Mount Tabor.

The River Trade and Steamboats stimulated the Development of Cape Girardeau

City Landmarks in 1928, a bridge was completed between Missouri and Illinois replacing ferries to cross the Mississippi River. In 2003, the Old Bridge was succeeded by a new four-lane cable-stay bridge named the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge; the two towers of the bridge reach a height of approximately 91 meters The Old Federal Courthouse, located at Broadway and Fountain Streets and built in the late 1940s, The City of Cape Girardeau was recognized in 2008 as a Preserve America Community for its work in surveying and protecting historic buildings.; it is home to 39 historic sites and eight historic districts, including the Downtown Commercial District.

The Mississippi River Tales is a mural containing 24 panels covering nearly 18,000 square feet (1,700 m²) of the 15-foot (4.6 m)-high downtown floodwall; they illustrate the local history beginning with the Native Americans who inhabited the area between 900 and 1200; each panel tells a story. The paintings are reminiscent of the works by Thomas Hart Benton; they were painted by Chicago artist Thomas Melvin in collaboration with several local artists.

North Platte Nebraska

railroad town river trails historical museum and buffalo bill ranch park

North Platte is in southwestern Nebraska at the confluence of the North and South Platte Rivers. It was established in 1868 when the Union Pacific Railroad was extended to that point; it was named from the North Platte River.

The Platte River originates in the state of Nebraska and is about 310 miles - 500 km - long. The Platte is a tributary of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers which flows to the Gulf of Mexico.

River Valley Trails played an important role in the westward expansion of the United States, providing the route for several major emigrant trails, including the Oregon, California, Mormon and Bozeman Trails. The French were the first Europeans to reach the Platte. The North Platte River is navigable over most of its length at high water by canoes, kayaks and rafts.

Bailey Yard is the world’s largest. The Golden Spike Tower and Visitor Center is an eight-story building which overlooks the expansive classification yard and engine facilities.

The Lincoln County Historical Museum contains a display detailing the history of the North Platte Canteen, which greeted 6.5 million service personnel from Christmas Day 1941 through April 1, 1946. It also contains a Prairie Village with local landmark homes and a Pony Express station and pioneer church.

Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park is located near here, a Nebraska living history park about Buffalo Bill Cody. The park includes his actual house known as Scout's Rest Ranch.