Biking in Avery Island Louisiana

Enjoy the beautiful and unique landscapes of Louisiana from your bike. Choose to ride through the green hills of northern Louisiana to the southern marshes along the coastal wetlands. You have your choice of routes, from lightly traveled, paved rural roads to challenging mountain-biking trails to easy, leisurely paths through Louisiana's many state parks. And the mild climate allows for biking almost any time of year.

The birthplace of TABASCO® brand pepper sauce, Avery Island has been owned for over 180 years by the interrelated Marsh, Avery and McIlhenny families. Lush subtropical flora and venerable live oaks draped with wild muscadine and swags of barbe espagnole, or Spanish moss, cover this geological oddity, which is one of five "islands" rising above south Louisiana’s flat coastal marshes.

The island occupies roughly 2,200 acres and sits atop a deposit of solid rock salt thought to be deeper than Mount Everest is high. Geologists believe this deposit is the remnant of a buried ancient seabed, pushed to the surface by the sheer weight of surrounding alluvial sediments.

Today, Avery Island remains the home of the TABASCO® brand pepper sauce factory, as well as Jungle Gardens and its Bird City wildfowl refuge. The Tabasco factory and the gardens are open to the public. For tourism information, visit www.TABASCO.com or call 337-365-8173.