Hurricane Audrey drives a 12-foot wall of water 25 miles into Louisiana; Cameron Parish is gone
Cameron Parish, Louisiana, sat at sea level with nothing between its residents and the Gulf of Mexico. On June 27, 1957, Hurricane Audrey — a Category 3 storm with 125 mph winds — made landfall near the Texas–Louisiana border and drove a 12-foot storm surge 25 miles inland, flooding more than 1.6 million acres. At least 416 people died in the United States, most of them in Cameron Parish, making Audrey the deadliest hurricane to strike the country since the 1928 Okeechobee storm. In Cameron itself, the courthouse was the only building left standing…
