Livingston, Louisiana | |
---|---|
Town | |
![]() Location of Livingston in Livingston Parish, Louisiana. | |
Coordinates: 30°29′55″N90°44′54″W / 30.49861°N 90.74833°W | |
Country | United States |
State | Louisiana |
Parish | Livingston |
Established | 1918 |
Government | |
• Mayor | Jonathan "JT" Taylor (Elected 2021) |
• Mayor Pro Tem | Robert "BJ" Stewart (Elected 2021) |
Area | |
• Total | 3.22 sq mi (8.35 km2) |
• Land | 3.22 sq mi (8.35 km2) |
• Water | 0.00 sq mi (0.00 km2) |
Elevation | 43 ft (13 m) |
Population (2020) | |
• Total | 1,877 |
• Density | 582.38/sq mi (224.86/km2) |
Time zone | UTC-6 (CST) |
• Summer (DST) | UTC-5 (CDT) |
ZIP Code | 70754 |
Area code | 225 |
FIPS code | 22-44655 |
Website | http://www.townoflivingston.com/ |
Livingston is the parish seat of Livingston Parish, Louisiana, United States. [2] The population was 1,769 at the 2010 census.
Livingston hosts one of the two LIGO gravitational wave detector sites, the other one being located in Hanford, Washington. [3]
Like the parish, Livingston takes its name from the jurist Edward Livingston.
Livingston was the site of a major train derailment (spilling about 200,000 gallons of chemicals) in 1982. [4]
On February 11 of 2016, it was officially announced that the LIGO collaboration successfully made the first direct observation of gravitational waves in September 2015. Barry Barish, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss were awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for leading this work. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
Livingston is located at 30°29′55″N90°44′54″W / 30.49861°N 90.74833°W (30.498721, -90.748371). [11]
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 3.1 square miles (8.0 km2), all land. The communities of Doyle and Livingston, combined in 1955 to create the Town of Livingston. Doyle was established northeast of present-day Livingston, located on Hog Branch, off present-day North Doyle Road but moved when the railroad was built from Baton Rouge to Hammond, and the community was re-located in 1901 by the McDonald family.
Livingston was started by the Lyons Lumber Company in 1916 as a logging community on 63 acres just west of Doyle, to support their logging industry and timber mill in Garyville, located south of Livingston on the Mississippi River. Therefore, Livingston and Garyville are sister cities.
When Livingston was first established there was a house on every lot, a board walk in front of every home, and water wells drilled on each corner so every home would have access to running water.
Census | Pop. | Note | %± |
---|---|---|---|
1960 | 1,183 | — | |
1970 | 1,398 | 18.2% | |
1980 | 1,260 | −9.9% | |
1990 | 999 | −20.7% | |
2000 | 1,342 | 34.3% | |
2010 | 1,769 | 31.8% | |
2020 | 1,877 | 6.1% | |
U.S. Decennial Census [12] |
Race | Number | Percentage |
---|---|---|
White (non-Hispanic) | 1,712 | 91.21% |
Black or African American (non-Hispanic) | 44 | 2.34% |
Native American | 5 | 0.27% |
Asian | 1 | 0.05% |
Other/Mixed | 61 | 3.25% |
Hispanic or Latino | 54 | 2.88% |
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 1,877 people, 679 households, and 492 families residing in the town.
As of the census [14] of 2000, there were 1,342 people, 539 households, and 377 families residing in the town. The population density was 429.8 inhabitants per square mile (165.9/km2). There were 581 housing units at an average density of 186.1 per square mile (71.9/km2). The racial makeup of the town was 96.05% White, 2.98% African American, 0.07% Native American, 0.22% Asian, and 0.67% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.52% of the population.
There were 539 households, out of which 34.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.9% were married couples living together, 15.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.9% were non-families. 25.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.49 and the average family size was 3.00.
In the town, the population was spread out, with 26.1% under the age of 18, 11.2% from 18 to 24, 27.0% from 25 to 44, 23.9% from 45 to 64, and 11.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 95.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.9 males.
The median income for a household in the town was $32,813, and the median income for a family was $41,625. Males had a median income of $33,958 versus $20,795 for females. The per capita income for the town was $15,075. About 10.9% of families and 12.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 7.7% of those under age 18 and 21.4% of those age 65 or over.
Livingston is within the Livingston Parish Public Schools system.
The following schools serve the Town of Livingston and the local area:
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool. Two large observatories were built in the United States with the aim of detecting gravitational waves by laser interferometry. These observatories use mirrors spaced four kilometers apart which are capable of detecting a change of less than one ten-thousandth the charge diameter of a proton.
Livingston Parish is a parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Its parish seat is the town of Livingston. Livingston Parish is one of the Florida Parishes, a region which, unlike the rest of the state, was part of the Spanish Empire rather than the French Empire.
Rainer "Rai" Weiss is a German-born American physicist, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. He is a professor of physics emeritus at MIT and an adjunct professor at LSU. He is best known for inventing the laser interferometric technique which is the basic operation of LIGO. He was Chair of the COBE Science Working Group.
GEO600 is a gravitational wave detector located near Sarstedt, a town 20 km to the south of Hanover, Germany. It is designed and operated by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and the Leibniz Universität Hannover, along with University of Glasgow, University of Birmingham and Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, and is funded by the Max Planck Society and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). GEO600 is capable of detecting gravitational waves in the frequency range 50 Hz to 1.5 kHz, and is part of a worldwide network of gravitational wave detectors. This instrument, and its sister interferometric detectors, when operational, are some of the most sensitive gravitational wave detectors ever designed. They are designed to detect relative changes in distance of the order of 10−21, about the size of a single atom compared to the distance from the Sun to the Earth. Construction on the project began in 1995.
Ronald William Prest Drever was a Scottish experimental physicist. He was a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, co-founded the LIGO project, and was a co-inventor of the Pound–Drever–Hall technique for laser stabilisation, as well as the Hughes–Drever experiment. This work was instrumental in the first detection of gravitational waves in September 2015.
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David Ernest McClelland is an Australian physicist, with his research focused on the development of the manipulation and control of optical quantum states, and its implementation into gravitational wave observatories. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America. Since 2001, he has been a professor at the Australian National University (ANU) in the Research School of Physics and Engineering, in Canberra (Australia). He is Director of the ANU's Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics and Deputy Director of OzGrav - the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Gravitational Wave Discovery.
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