Zachary is a city in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Much of the land which the city of Zachary now occupies was part of a 160-acre farm owned by Darel Zachary. In the 1880s, Zachary sold his land to the Illinois Central Railroad, who built a track and a depot on it. A village quickly grew up around the depot, which came to be called Zachary after the original farmer. Zachary’s first post office was opened in 1885, and it was incorporated as a city on August 2, 1889, with Thomas Edward McHugh as its first mayor. A fire devastated the city in 1903, supposedly caused by a greengrocer trying to flame-ripen his bananas. The historic village at the center of the city is composed of buildings which either survived the fire, or were built shortly after it, the oldest, excluding the depot, being the 1898 Allison House (Wikipedia, 2019).
Citation
Wikipedia. (2019, Oct. 18). Zachary, Louisiana. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org.
How it all Began 