Located in Iberia Parish, Louisiana, United States, it is about three miles (4.8 km) inland from Vermilion Bay, which opens onto the Gulf of Mexico.

Native Americans discovered that the island's verdant flora covered a precious natural resource: a massive salt dome.

They boiled the island's briny spring water to extract salt, which they traded to other tribes as far away as central Texas, Arkansas, and Ohio.

According to company history, McIlhenny bought his stock of nutrias from a farm near New Orleans, so he was not the first to introduce the creature, a native of southern Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, to North America.

[4] According to The New York Times, the family spent $5 million on constructing a 17-foot (5.2 m)-high levee, pumps, and back-up generators to ensure that future hurricanes will not disrupt Tabasco sauce production.

McIlhenny's illustrated and written documentation of plant and animal life on Avery Island was donated to the Louisiana State University library.

[5] Edward McIlhenny introduced numerous varieties of azaleas, camellias, papyrus sedge, and other non-native plants to the Island's ecosystem.

When oil was discovered on the Island in 1942, he ensured that production crews bypassed live oak trees and buried pipelines (or painted them green) so the petroleum extraction didn't harm the aesthetics.

[6] Avery Island is surrounded on all sides by bayous (slow-moving, muddy rivers), salt marsh, and swampland; it sits about 130 miles (210 km) west of New Orleans.