St. James, LA

St. James is a west-bank community in St. James Parish with 592 residents at the 2020 census. Its setting is the Mississippi River, and the place carries a rare civic distinction: when the parish was created in 1807 as one of Louisiana's original nineteen parishes, the first seat of government was here. In 1869 the courthouse moved across the river to what became Convent, but the old parish-seat story still gives St. James its place in the River Parishes map.

The community remains part of a larger parish landscape shaped by the river and the old Acadian Coast. St. James Parish stretches between New Orleans and Baton Rouge and is split by the Mississippi, so the river is both the local backdrop and the dividing line that organizes the area. St. James Parish Public Schools lists St. Louis Academy for the community's youngest students. The place is small, but its name reaches back to the parish's first government and its first chapter.