Westwego

Westwego is a city in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, United States, and a suburb of New Orleans. It lies along the West Bank of the Mississippi River. One story states generally that Westwego was so named because it was a major crossing point on the Mississippi river during the great westward movement of the late 19th century. When travelers were asked their destination, they would often reply "west we go". Another more specific tale, recounted in John Churchill Chase's Frenchmen, Desire Good, Children is that the name was the specific outcome of an 1871 meeting of a railroad board of directors in New York, where planning was undertaken to use the site as an eastern terminus ("...west we go from there"). There has been further speculation that this use of "Westwego" as a place name may have been influenced by the board members' familiarity with the name of Oswego, New York. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 3.6square miles (9.2Square kilometers): 3.2square miles (8.3Square kilometers) of it is land, and 0.4square miles (1.0Square kilometers) of it (10.64%) is water.