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is a city in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, United States, in the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 11,275 at the 2000 census.
As the population of East Baton Rouge Parish grows, Zachary is increasingly transforming itself from a country town to an affluent suburb of Baton Rouge. Land prices in Zachary have increased dramatically in recent years because of this, and, as of 2006, the displacement caused by Hurricane Katrina is expected to intensify this even more as former residents of New Orleans neighborhoods move northward.
However, the U.S. Census Bureau released a population count for East Baton Rouge Parish, done in July 2006 but released in Mach 2007 which includes Baker, Louisiana and Zachary and found that only 19,264 displaced citizens remain in East Baton Rouge Parish which dismisses all claims about Zachary's "intensifying" growth with only a small portion of displaced citizens remaining and many still consider themselves "temporary" as they wait for federal recovery cash to return to their homes in the New Orleans metropolitan area or other Gulf Coast regions.
While the study dismissed claims of Zachary's intensifying growth as a result of displaced citizens of Hurricane Katrina, Zachary is continually adding an enormous amount of residents due to having the Number 1 ranked school system in Louisiana for 3 consecutive years.
Zachary was named after a farmer who owned the land that became the present city of Zachary. Zachary's first post office opened in 1885, and it was incorporated as a city in 1889. The first census in 1914 reported just 419 residents. By 1980, there were 7,525 residents, in 2000 there were 11,275 residents.
The Zachary school district became independent from the East Baton Rouge Parish school district in 2004.
Zachary was the first city in Louisiana to elect a Republican as mayor in 20th-century Louisiana. Jack Louis Breaux, Sr., served as a part-time mayor from 1966-1978, and a full-time mayor under a home-rule charter from 1978 until his death of a brain tumor on January 26, 1980.