The town of Buras was established, informally, in the 1840s. Several small settlements on the West Bank of the Mississippi River north of
Fort Jackson became known collectively as the Quartiers des Burats, the Burat Settlement, anchored on the property of Sebastian Burat, near where Cazezu Boulevard meets Parish Highway 11 today. Burat was later anglicized to Buras. In 1854, the Buras Post Office was established, along with a regular mail route by packet boat on the river. By 1864, a new church, Our Lady of Good Harbor, was established in Buras as the community grew.
Civil War In April 1862, during the
American Civil War, the
Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip took place near Buras. Union Flag Officer
David Farragut led a fleet up the river to capture New Orleans and engaged the forts in the early morning hours of April 23. A single Union vessel, the
USS Varuna, was sunk near Buras in an engagement with the Confederate steamer
CSS Governor Moore and the
CSS Stonewall Jackson. The heavily damaged
Governor Moore also sank, not far from its Union opponent.
20th century In the first decades of the 20th century, Buras' primary industries were oyster fishing and citrus farming. In the 1930s, petroleum was discovered in the region, along with natural gas and sulfur. One of the first producing fields was established in Quarantine Bay, east of Buras, by the Gulf Oil Company. With the coming of the oil and gas industries, Buras began to slowly evolve from a farming and fishing village into a larger community.
Hurricanes Buras-Triumph and the surrounding communities have been subjected to many devastating hurricanes over the years, including the
1893 Cheniere Caminada hurricane, which destroyed the original church, the
1901 Louisiana hurricane, the
1915 New Orleans hurricane,
Hurricane Betsy in 1965, and
Hurricane Camille in 1969. More recently, this area was the location where, on August 29, 2005, the eye of
Hurricane Katrina first made landfall in Louisiana. Although Katrina was one of the costliest natural disasters to strike the U.S., according to the Hurricane Severity Index, at landfall both
Betsy and
Camille were higher-intensity hurricanes than Katrina. However, the loss of surrounding marsh lands to erosion and
subsidence allowed the energy of Hurricane Katrina's
storm surge to overtop the
levee system and the area was devastated yet again. Emblematic of the rebuilding and recovery is the new Buras water tower. The image of the previous tower, collapsed in the rubble, was an icon of the destruction Katrina brought. (See photos.) ==Geography==