Louisiana Tourism

Louisiana's secretary of culture, recreation and tourism was in Orange County recently, enjoying the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, pondering a survey taken in Irvine of attitudes toward his state and generally trying to drum up business and leisure travel. Louisiana is celebrating its 300th birthday this year, which has proved to be a "banner year" for tourism, said the secretary, Phillip J. Jones.

Louisiana's secretary of culture, recreation and tourism was in Orange County recently, enjoying the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, pondering a survey taken in Irvine of attitudes toward his state and generally trying to drum up business and leisure travel. Louisiana is celebrating its 300th birthday this year, which has proved to be a "banner year" for tourism, said the secretary, Phillip J. Jones.

Swamps aren't very sexy. Dank places filled with slithering creatures don't scream tourism, unless you're from Louisiana. So how would one fare in New York City? "Swamps in Louisiana have tremendous adventure-travel opportunities," says Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne. On Wednesday, he flew to un-gator-like Manhattan to oversee the installation of a 12,100-cubic-foot re-creation of a Louisiana swamp built inside the city's bustling Chelsea Market. The exhibit is free and might be a good way to sample the bayou before going to visit.

A Cajun town about 150 miles west of here is playing historical detective, offering a $2,000 reward for the recovery of a New Deal mural its post office once had on its wall. But Eunice, La., is not on some loony chase. Towns across the country are on similar pursuits to preserve public murals commissioned by government programs ushered in by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal after he was elected president in 1932.

Rachel Thompson had never tasted shrimp in her native Louisiana, and Ronnie Emonet had never heard the wind moan through the pines in the hill country of his home state. The two 16-year-olds represent the best hope for dismantling a wall of mistrust built generations ago between two cultures, said Carole Andrepont of Opelousas, who turned what started as a joke into a social experiment that worked. Andrepont, a member of the Louisiana Tourism Board active in international youth exchange programs, jokingly told a friend one day: "If you want to have a real cultural exchange, have folks from north Louisiana come to south Louisiana.

From the air, the coast of Louisiana resembles a broken mirror, slivered in shards of landscape and bands of floodwater. On the ground, the destruction is by now familiar -- whole forests toppled, houses carried off by currents or obliterated by wind blasts, sweat-streaked soldiers and repair crews gaping at the enormity of it all.