Scotlandville

Take a trip five miles north of Baton Rouge to the airport, and you’ll find yourself in Scotlandville, which—according to residents—was once considered the “largest black town” in Louisiana. Three roads and the Mississippi River to the west enclose this four-mile area. Various theories surround the origin of its name, however. The most prominent contains no mention of the kilt-wearing, bagpipes-playing country across the Pond.

According to genealogist and former East Baton Rouge Parish Librarian Edna Jordan Smith, the town took its name from an early-19th-century landowner named Scott. This man also lent his name to Scott’s Bluff, the current site of Southern University.

In 1892 the area had a population of 300-400. Over time, former plantation workers came to farm the surrounding area, developing the name “Scott Land.” Standard Oil Refinery—now ExxonMobil—settled in 1909. As wages and jobs expanded, the little village of Scotland became Scotlandville.

“Standard Oil brought a bulk of the people,” Smith says. “People left the plantations and wanted to get an education, so they poured into Scotlandville.”

Read about the Red Stick Farmers Mobile Market and its service to Scotlandville here.