Start, LA

Start is a Richland Parish community near Boeuf River, with Crew Lake running through the flat northeastern Louisiana landscape. Before Richland Parish formed in 1868, the area belonged to Morehouse Parish; afterward it appeared under several local names including Ward 3, Crew Lake, Charleston, and Wynn Island. The final name, Start, belongs to a place shaped by water and parish lines more than by a compact municipal boundary.

Lafourche Diversion Canal lies west, Boeuf River east, and parish roads run among fields, bayous, and drainage channels. Start Elementary School serves pre-kindergarten through eighth grade under the Richland Parish School Board, giving the community its main institutional address. Rayville provides parish offices and larger services, while Delhi and other Richland communities connect the local road network. Crew Lake is the strongest visual cue: a small waterway crossing a big agricultural landscape and keeping the community's older names visible on the map. The watercourses turn ordinary road trips into a study of levees, bridges, and field edges.