Pointe Coupee Parish, is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The parish seat is New Roads.
Pointe Coupee Parish (/ˈpɔɪnt kəˈpiː/ or /ˈpwɑːnt kuːˈpeɪ/; French: Paroisse de la Pointe-Coupée) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 20,758.[2] The parish seat is New Roads.[3]

Pointe Coupee Parish is part of the Baton Rouge, Louisiana Metropolitan Statistical Area. In 2010, the center of population of Louisiana was located in Pointe Coupee Parish, in the city of New Roads.[4]

History
Further information: Point Coupee, Louisiana and New Roads, Louisiana
Pointe Coupee is the oldest settlement on the lower Mississippi, having been made by some wandering Canadian trappers as early as 1708. Bienville established this place as a military post, before the commencement of New Orleans. Settlers arrived in 1719, making it the third oldest settlement in Louisiana. The fort was moved in 1722 to an area near the present St. Francisville Ferry landing.

After several floods, Governor Luis de Unzaga in 1772 moved the European settlement to a new post, the so-called Post Unzaga. Recently, historians Cazorla and Polo, from the Louis de Unzaga Historical Society research team, using satellite remote sensing techniques and comparative plans from the General Archive of the Indies, have managed to locate the position of the Unzaga post, which included, along with it, a parish. After the slave rebellion of 1795 this settlement was left uninhabited.[5] Pointe Coupee Parish (originally and recently, informally pronounced pwahnt coo-pee) was organized by European Americans in 1805 as part of the Territory of Orleans (statehood for Louisiana followed in 1812). It was originally called Pointe Coupee County, and was one of the original 12 counties of the Territory of Orleans. It was renamed as Pointe Coupee Parish in 1816. The original Pointe Coupee Parish included parts of present-day Iberville and West Baton Rouge Parishes. There were minor boundary adjustments with neighboring parishes up through 1852, when its boundaries stabilized.[6]

In 2008, Pointe Coupee was one of the communities that suffered the most damage by Hurricane Gustav.

Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the parish has a total area of 591 square miles (1,530 km2), of which 557 square miles (1,440 km2) is land and 33 square miles (85 km2) (5.6%) is water.[7] The land consists mainly of prairies and backswamp.