[3] The area of cotton culture in Louisiana in parishes along this part of the Mississippi River was also referred to as the Natchez District.

West Carroll Parish has a long history of inhabitants who predated the formation of the United States by thousands of years.

On the south end of West Carroll Parish is Poverty Point, a nearly square-mile complex of ancient major earthwork semi-circles and radiating lanes, plus additional platform mounds.

Archeologists have determined that the site was built in the Late Archaic period beginning about 1500 BCE, and it was the central trading grounds for the Poverty Point culture that occupied the lower Mississippi River Valley.

Throughout the early part of the 19th century, the European-American population of the western portion of Carroll Parish continued to grow; its economy was based mainly on cotton production and timber.

By 1855 the population had grown to the point where there were enough votes to move the parish seat west of the Bayou Macon and Floyd was selected.

It developed as a typical frontier town with a hotel, post office, general store, and saloons.

According to the book, Between the Rivers, the war resulted in a divide that would eventually lead to the creation of West Carroll Parish:

Some historians believed that insurgent activity, such as the Quantrill Gang, which operated primarily in Missouri, replaced regular forces.

In the early 1870s during Reconstruction, Frank and his brother Jesse James continued their outlaw activities, robbing banks for personal gain from Missouri to Texas.

Soon after white Democrats regained power in the state legislature, they approved the creation of West Carroll Parish, which had a majority-white population.

East Carroll Parish was majority black, as it had been the center of cotton plantation agriculture, dependent on the labor of numerous enslaved African Americans.

Cotton and timber continued to be the life-blood of the new parish, although areas dependent on agriculture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had economic difficulties.

The parish had ten cotton gins and three sawmills, and steamboats continued to run Bayou Macon as the main hub of transportation.

Steamboat traffic on the Boeuf and Macon rivers dwindled due to the competition of railways constructed through the South.

In the early part of the 20th century, Donald B. Fiske opened a state-of the art cotton gin and compress to complement his sawmill.

In the 1960s and 1970s, city growth continued, with the construction of a modern hospital and nursing home, and the Wells Lamont garment factory.

Its style and construction quickly gained in popularity around the region, thus spurring the formation of Ruffin Building Systems.

With the coming of the 1980s and the rise of the large department stores in malls, business on Main Street began to decline.

Today agriculture is still king in West Carroll; the main crops are corn, rice, cotton, and sweet potatoes.

In East Carroll Parish, however, which has a majority African-American population, Obama won nearly 62 percent of the ballots.