Jennings, Louisiana

Jennings owes its name and its existence to the railroad. In the eighteen eighties, a Southern Pacific contractor named Jennings McComb built a depot on a low divide in southwest Louisiana, and railroad officials honored him by naming the surrounding area after his first name. The first settler to put down roots was A.

D. McFarlain, who arrived from Saint Mary Parish in eighteen eighty-one and became, simultaneously, the community's first rice grower, first merchant, first postmaster, and first brick maker. The town was formally founded May second, eighteen eighty-eight.

Jennings grew into the parish seat of Jefferson Davis Parish and today is home to around ten thousand people, sitting squarely between the rice fields and oil derricks that define this corner of Louisiana.