What city is called "The Frog Capital of the World"?

In a small town in the middle of Louisiana's Cajun prairie, a stone's throw from New Orleans, is a town called Rayne, where frogs have gained iconographic stature. Frogs and Rayne have a relatively long history that dates back to the 1880s, when a gourmet chef named Donat Pucheu, started selling juicy, delectable bullfrogs to New Orleans restaurants. Word of Rayne's frog delicacies spread like wildfire, and soon attracted the Weil Brothers from France, who started a lucrative business exporting frogs to restaurants. For years, world-renowned restaurants like Sardi's in New York boasted of offering frog legs from Rayne, Louisiana.

The success of the Weil Brothers business helped put Rayne on the map as the "Frog Capital of the World". In 1946, Rayne's froggy reputation was furthered when the International Rice Festival invited Rayne to host the first Frog Derby, an event where the prettiest women in town dressed frogs up in jockey uniforms and raced them. This event continues today.. if you happen to be in the area on Labor Day weekend, you can still see it as part of Rayne's annual Frog Festival.

Rayne no longer exports frogs, but their frog identity is bigger than ever because of a unique array of frog murals. What started as a beautification project has turned into a tradition of commissioned murals. If you walk down the quaint streets of Rayne, you will see frogs painted on everything, from trees to the walls of the local five-and-dime.