The building before you is a sturdy red brick rectangle anchored by a grand colonnade of tall, pale stone pillars stretching across its striking two-story facade. This was once the powerful Baton Rouge station. Just steps from where you stand is the mighty Mississippi River. For generations, that restless water was the absolute industrial and logistical lifeblood of this city, carrying the raw materials that built the region. But the river needed a partner on land, and that is exactly why this massive depot was constructed for the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad.
Think of the sheer force that used to rumble right where you are standing. If you pull up the second picture on your app, you can see the legendary IC-333. This beast was a massive coal-burning steam engine built in 1918. It was a zero-six-zero switcher, a specialized classification for incredibly heavy locomotives designed to haul colossal freight cars around the railyards with brute, unstoppable power. For decades, that massive iron machine sat right outside this building as a monument to the city's heavy industrial grit, before it was eventually relocated to a museum in Tioga in 2011.
As passenger rail declined, this mighty station was abandoned. But true to the spirit of a place that never stops forging its next chapter from the foundations of its past, the depot was entirely reborn. In 1976, it transformed into the Louisiana Art and Science Museum.
Inside these old brick walls, they hold some genuinely wild artifacts. They have an actual Apollo 11 lunar sample, and a massive sixty-five-million-year-old Triceratops skull named Jason. They even house an ancient Egyptian mummy from the Ptolemaic dynasty. For years, experts thought the mummy was a female priestess because of how the hands were crossed over the pelvis. But modern scanning technology revealed a much darker truth. The mummy was actually a young man who suffered seven fatal broken ribs right before his death. Because he was naturally mummified in the dry sand before traditional burial rites, rare physical details like his hair and an open mouth were perfectly preserved.
If you want to explore the museum and its planetarium, they are open Wednesday through Sunday with varying afternoon hours. Now, let us walk toward the River Center, a place of modern entertainment that holds a profound modern history, as we make the five-minute trek to our next destination, the Raising Cane's River Center.
