BATON ROUGE, LA – City leaders unveiled plans Tuesday for the nation’s first “Baton Rouge Heritage Trail,” a self-guided driving tour connecting dozens of buildings that residents still refuse to identify by their current tenants.
The trail highlights former Delchamps grocery stores, abandoned Shoney’s locations, old Godfather’s Pizza restaurants, and several buildings locals continue describing as “where the Blockbuster used to be.”
“People don’t ask where a business is,” said one city historian. “They ask where it used to be. We’ve accepted that’s never changing.”
Visitors will receive a commemorative map featuring landmarks such as “The Old Delchamps,” “The Other Old Delchamps,” and “That Building That Was Five Different Mexican Restaurants in Five Years.”
Officials estimate the average Baton Rouge resident hasn’t used a current business as a point of reference since 2008.
Tour organizers say the final stop is a vacant building everyone swears was once something else, though no two residents can agree what it actually was.
City officials confirmed the trail’s first expansion will include every building residents still insist “had better food before they remodeled it.”
