Lake Charles (French: Lac Charles) is the fifth-largest incorporated city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, and the parish chair of Calcasieu Parish, located upon Lake Charles, Prien Lake, and the Calcasieu River. Founded in 1861 in Calcasieu Parish, it is a major industrial, cultural, and educational middle in the southwest region of the state. As of the 2020 U.S. census, Lake Charles’s population was 84,872.

The city and metropolitan area of Lake Charles is considered a regionally significant center of petrochemical refining, gambling, tourism, and education, being house to McNeese State University and Sowela Technical Community College. Because of the lakes and waterways throughout the city, metropolitan Lake Charles is often called the Lake Area.

On March 7, 1861, Lake Charles was incorporated as the town of Charleston, Louisiana.

Lake Charles was founded by merchant and tradesman Marco Eliche (or Marco de Élitxe) as an outpost. He was a Sephardic Jewish trader of either Basque-Spanish or Venetian-Italian origins. He had arrived in Louisiana after hitchhiking and was invited onto a Spanish vessel due to his get-up-and-go and allegiance to volunteer and play-act freely for the Spanish Empire. Long before incorporation and even back the Louisiana Purchase, other names for Lake Charles were Porte du Lafitte (Port of Jean Lafitte) or Rivière Lafitte (River Lafitte/Lafitte’s River), among many supplementary names now lost. Eliche had with founded extra outposts and towns in Louisiana prior, most notably Marksville, which is named after him. There are furthermore urban tales he had planned to pronounce the settlement Nouveau Cadix (New Cádiz)”, after the city in Spain, but this is uncertain.