Map of Iota town

Iota is a town in Acadia Parish, Louisiana. The population was 1,304 in 2020. Iota is part of the Crowley Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Iota town overview:
Name:	Iota town
LSAD Code:	43
LSAD Description:	town (suffix)
State:	Louisiana
County:	Acadia Parish
Elevation:	30 ft (9 m)
Total Area:	1.27 sq mi (3.29 km²)
Land Area:	1.27 sq mi (3.29 km²)
Water Area:	0.00 sq mi (0.00 km²)
Total Population:	1,304
Population Density:	1,026.77/sq mi (396.42/km²)
FIPS code:	2237410

Online Interactive Map

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Iota online map. Source: Basemap layers from Google Map, Open Street Map (OSM), Arcgisonline, Wmflabs. Boundary Data from Database of Global Administrative Areas.

Iota location map. Where is Iota town?

Iota location on the U.S. Map. Where is Iota town. — Iota location on the U.S. Map.

Iota location on the Louisiana map. Where is Iota town. — Location of Iota in Louisiana.

History

The history of Iota is identified with Pointe-aux-Loups (French for Wolf Point), one of the oldest place names in southwest Louisiana, and the location of mineral springs that attracted many visitors beginning about 1858. The older settlement was located on Bayou des Cannes about two miles west of the present Town of Iota. A post office named Cartville, for the first postmaster Samuel Cart, was established in the vicinity of Pointe-aux-Loups in 1884. Ten years later, a railroad branch line from Midland to Eunice bypassed Cartville by a mile or so to the east. The railroad company built a depot at a point on the line nearest to the Cartville and Pointe-aux-Loups settlements, naming it Iota. The Cartville post office was changed to Iota in 1900.

C.C. Duson is credited with being the founder of Iota. It was he who promoted the construction of the Southern Pacific rail line to Eunice, the new town that he founded in St. Landry Parish. At the same time, 1894, Duson acquired the land on which Iota now stands, a 160-acre tract which had been homesteaded by Archille Doucet in 1835. Duson divided the land into town lots and sold them. Duson was the prime mover in the establishment of the Acadia Canal Company in the vicinity of Iota, and president of the town’s first rice mill in 1901—two businesses said to have been responsible for Iota’s early economic development.

Iota and its people continued to prosper throughout the 20th century, with agriculture and petroleum as the primary sectors of the local economy. During this time, rice and later crawfish developed as the main cash crops of the area.

In the 1990s, it was discovered that Iota has an unusually high number of people carrying Tay-Sachs, a rare genetic disorder.

Iota was represented in the novel No Place Louisiana by Martin Pousson, published in 2002.

Iota is the home of American Legion Post No. 371 and many veterans of foreign wars.