city, seat (1808) of Lafourche parish, southeastern Louisiana, U.S., on Bayou Lafourche, 49 miles (79 km) southwest of New Orleans. The area was occupied by the Colapissa Indians in the 1680s. It was founded as a river depot about 1750 and settled by French, Spanish, and Acadian migrants to the area and by Des Allemands (Germans from Scottish reformer John Law (Law, John)'s ill-fated economic venture known as the Mississippi Bubble). St. John's Episcopal Church was established in 1844 by Leonidas Polk (Polk, Leonidas), an Episcopal bishop who later fought for the Confederacy.

Several antebellum plantation homes are preserved in Thibodaux, including those of Henry Schuyler Thibodaux (Louisiana acting governor, 1824) and Edward Douglass White (White, Edward Douglass), U.S. Supreme Court chief justice; the latter's home is now a state memorial park. Its economy depends on sugar, cattle and truck farming, the manufacture of agricultural equipment, and the oil and gas industry. Thibodaux is the seat of Nicholls State University (1948). Inc. city, 1838. Pop. (1990) 14,035; (2000) 14,431.