Montegut, LA

Montegut is a Terrebonne Parish community in the lower bayou country south of Houma, part of the Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux metropolitan area. The settlement grew around a sugar mill founded in 1883, and its post office opened in 1885; Congressman Edward James Gay named it for Gabriel Montegut, a prominent Houma resident. The 2020 census counted 1,465 residents.

Montegut Elementary and Montegut Middle give the community a local school core under Terrebonne Parish School District, with Fletcher Technical Community College and Delgado Community College serving the wider parish. Montegut also carries an unusual film connection: it was the primary filming location for the 2012 movie Beasts of the Southern Wild. The movie's marsh country and the actual landscape overlap in a place where water, roads, schools, and parish services organize daily movement. Those school names and the marsh setting keep the community's scale visible. Montegut is a small south Terrebonne community with a sugar-mill beginning, a named post office, and a recognizable place in both local education and film history.