Sugar cane was a lucrative commodity crop for planters. This territory was part of the sugar parishes, where sugar cane plantations were developed along the waterways before and after the Civil War, dependent on labor of high numbers of enslaved African Americans before the war. It was part of an effort by the Reconstruction-era government to create parishes in which there would be large Republican-majority populations, composed primarily of freedmen in those years. Iberia Parish was created from parts of St. The Port of Iberia has a waterway with access to the Gulf Coast. Iberia Parish is part of the Lafayette metropolitan area.
Historically, it has also been a center for sugar cane cultivation and produces the most sugar of any parish in the state. Some of its ethnic French residents had ancestors who settled here after being expelled in the 18th century by the British from Acadia in present-day Canada. It is part of the 22-parish Acadiana region of the state, with a large Francophone population.
The parish was formed in 1868 during the Reconstruction era and named for the Iberian Peninsula. At the 2020 census, it had a population of 69,929 the parish seat is New Iberia. Iberia Parish ( French: Paroisse de l'Ibérie, Spanish: Parroquia de Iberia) is a parish located in the U.S.
