A meeting hall (right) in the historic district of Donaldsonville, a colorful small town that is the seat of Ascension Parish, Louisiana (the state calls its counties "parishes") along the west bank of the Mississippi River. Donaldsonville has retained more than 640 vintage structures — one of the South's most extensive arrays of buildings dating from antebellum (pre-Civil War) days to 1933. Photo by Carol Highsmith, 2021.