Ascension Parish, Louisiana

Ascension Parish (French: Paroisse de l'Ascension; Spanish: Parroquia de la Ascensión) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 126,500. Its parish seat is Donaldsonville. The parish was created in 1807. Ascension Parish is part of the Baton Rouge metropolitan statistical area.

Ascension Parish is one of the 22 parishes that make up Acadiana, the heartland of the Cajun people and their culture. This is exhibited by the prevalence of the French or Cajun French language heard throughout the parish, as well as the many festivals celebrated by its residents, including the Boucherie Festival, Lagniappe Music and Seafood Festival, Crawfish Festival, and the Jambalaya Festival. The largest incorporated city in Ascension Parish, Gonzales, is celebrated as the "Jambalaya Capital of the World".

Early European settlers of the area that was developed as Ascension and Gonzales were, for the most part, of French and Spanish ancestry. They settled among the Houma Indians who lived in the area.

Among the projects and plans carried out by Luis de Unzaga 'le Conciliateur' while he was governor of Louisiana between 1769 and 1777 was the promotion of new settlements by Europeans, among them were French Acadians and Málaga in the fertile Mississippi region and more specifically in the Unzaga Post or 'Puesto de Unzaga' that he created in 1771 in Pointe Coupee, the parish of Saint Gabriel in 1773 and Fort Manchac in 1776; the Ascension people occupied land at the confluence of the aforementioned European settlements.

During the historic 2016 Louisiana Floods, around one-third of all homes in Ascension Parish were flooded; 15,000 homes and businesses took on water, mostly in the Galvez-St. Amant area, prompting a visit to St. Amant by then-presidential candidate, Donald Trump.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the parish has a total area of 303 square miles (780 km²), of which 290 square miles (750 km²) is land and 13 square miles (34 km²) (4.2%) is water. It is the fourth-smallest parish in Louisiana by total area.

|estyear=2023 |estimate=131632 |estref=

In 1810, the parish had a population of 2,219; since then, its population has steadily increased despite some decades of population decline. In 1900, the parish's population reached a first historic high of 24,142 before increasing again to 58,214 at the 1990 U.S. census. At the 2010 census, Ascension Parish's population grew to 107,215; and at the 2020 United States census, there were 126,500 people, 44,267 households, and 32,305 families residing in the parish.