Breaux Bridge, Crawfish Capital of the World
Near Lafayette, Louisiana
Breaux Bridge sits on Bayou Teche, and its story begins with a bridge. In seventeen ninety-nine, an Acadian settler named Firmin Breaux built a suspension footbridge across the bayou for his neighbors. Three decades later, his widowed daughter-in-law Scholastique Picou Breaux drew up a formal town plan and began selling lots in eighteen twenty-nine, making her the true founder of the city.
In eighteen fifty-nine it was officially incorporated. The Acadian community here had long cooked crawfish pulled from the surrounding bayous, and by the nineteen fifties Breaux Bridge restaurants were putting crawfish on the menu, and the town became closely tied to crawfish etouffee. Breaux Bridge was later officially designated the Crawfish Capital of the World.
