Delhi, LA

Delhi is a Richland Parish town where U.S. 80 and Louisiana 17 meet, with I-20 close enough to keep the highway in the local conversation. The 2020 census counted 2,622 residents. It was first called Deerfield, and its early story includes Delhi Institute, later renamed Lampton College. A fire in 1907 sent the college campus to Alexandria, and the school was eventually absorbed by Campbell College in Jackson, Mississippi. The low, flat setting also gave Delhi an unusual piece of luck during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927: its elevation spared it from the worst of the surrounding destruction.

The big mid-century turn was underground. A natural-gas boom in the 1940s made Delhi the principal beneficiary of Richland Parish's oil and gas activity, with the Delhi Gasoline Plant and Sun Camp houses leaving a visible industrial and residential imprint. Today, Delhi Elementary, Delhi Middle, and Delhi High School keep the town's school map close to home, while Black Bear Golf Club gives the outskirts a different kind of landscape. Delhi is a place where a highway town, an old college story, and an oil-field past are all still folded into the same parish crossroads.