St. George slayed the dragon.
Ask most people about the venerated Christian knight, and they'll reply with this one-sentence story. A statue commemorating this moment stands in front of St. George Catholic Church off of Siegen Lane in Baton Rouge.
So why was the East Baton Rouge Parish City of St. George named after the dragon slayer?
That wasn't the exact way a Baton Rouge reader posed her question. St. George's name obviously plays a part in the city's name, and St. George Catholic Church stands within the municipality.
A plaque commemorating St. George Catholic Church's 1908 establishment as a parish hangs on the church's building, which was dedicated in 2017.
STAFF PHOTO BY ROBIN MILLER
"Is the city named for the church?" the reader asked. "Or are there other factors? Where does the city get its name?"
The village and fire department
Some sources attribute it to the area's Village St. George subdivision, built in phases between 1956 and 1968. Other sources give partial credit to the Village of St. George Volunteer Fire Department and Social Club, established in 1966.
The fire department eventually evolved into the St. George Fire Protection District.
And the Catholic parish of St. George was established in this area in 1908, making it the second-oldest Catholic church in East Baton Rouge Parish. The oldest is the Cathedral of St. Joseph on Main Street.
St. George Catholic Church, 7808 St. George Drive.
PROVIDED PHOTO
"I wouldn't say it was any one single thing, but I would say all of those things contributed to the choice of the name," said Scott Byrd, City of St. George's program director. "They wanted to pick something that people could already identify with, and those three things are probably some of the more notable things in this area."
Byrd points out that the core of the city was already called the Village of St. George on maps because of the subdivision.
"And so, I think all of those things combined led to the decision to name the city St. George when they were forming the petition to create a city," Byrd said.
How it happened
The movement for the city's formation originally began in 2010 after residents in the Shenandoah neighborhood sought to break away from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System to form their own independent district. The effort failed, resulting in a bigger urban secession movement.
The City of Saint George logo.
STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
The incorporation of the City of St. George was finally approved in a special election on Oct. 12, 2019, by 54% of the voters residing within the proposed city's boundaries in the southeast corner of East Baton Rouge Parish. After several years of legal battles, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in favor of St. George, allowing the incorporation to proceed.
That was in April 2024. The city elected its first mayor and city council on March 29, 2025, and with a population of almost 84,000, it's now Louisiana's fifth-largest city.
St. George is the state's newest city, unseating the City of Central, also in East Baton Rouge Parish, which held the "newest" status after its incorporation on April 23, 2005.
The city is nestled in the southeast portion of East Baton Rouge Parish and includes the Inniswold, Oak Hills Place, Old Jefferson, Shenandoah, Village St. George and Westminster communities. City maps can be viewed at the East Baton Rouge Parish Geographic Information System website, . They show rough borders that follow roads on the city's north side and Bayou Manchac on the south.
A map of the City of St. George.
FILE PHOTO
The city's boundaries
St. George Catholic Church unintentionally played a big part in how these boundaries were determined. According to , a website formed by the city's supporters during the transition from community to city, "the church parish's original boundaries were similar to the City of St. George's city limits, providing the area with an early sense of continuity."
The church's website, , traces its history from its humble beginnings in a "small, wooden chapel sitting off a remote country road ... on land donated in 1885 by the widow of George Kleinpeter," who was one of Baton Rouge's earliest and most prominent landowners and farmers.
"The exact date the chapel was built is unknown, but St. George is listed as a chapel and school in the church directories of the Archdiocese of New Orleans by 1891," the church history continues. "At the time, St. George was a mission of St. Joseph Church in Baton Rouge. Prior to the building of the chapel, this small community was served by priests from St. Joseph who arrived once a month to celebrate Mass in one of the area homes."
ASI Signage Innovations installers Troy Miller, left, and Michael Miller, right, load letters and numbers onto a manlift, before affixing them to the front of the new St. George Fire Dept. Station 60 building at 14100 Airline Highway, near Barringer Foreman Rd., Friday, July 15, 2022.
STAFF PHOTO BY TRAVIS SPRADLING
The parish was established in 1908, and according to the Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge, the church's name, St. George, was a nod to George Kleinpeter's "patron saint" — the saint for whom he was named.
The story of St. George
Jacobus de Voragine, the 13th-century Archbishop of Genoa, recounted the legend of St. George in his book, "The Golden Legend; or, Lives of the Saints."
"Saint George was a knight and born in Cappadocia," he writes. "One time he came to the city of Silene in the province of Libya. Near this city was a pond, wherein there was a dragon which was poisoning all the country."
The new St. George City Hall building pictured on Thursday, October 2, 2025.
Javier Gallegos
The city's people tried to appease the creature by supplying it with a meal of two sheep a day. When there were no more sheep, a daily lottery of human sacrifices was put in place.
"Whoever the lot fell upon, wealthy or poor, he or she was delivered to the dragon," de Voragine writes.
That's when the name of the king's daughter was drawn, and to make a long story short, St. George rescued her by killing the dragon.
The real story of St. George, though tragic, is less fantastical. He was, indeed, born in Cappadocia — now Turkey — in the third century. He wasn't a knight but a high-ranking officer in the Praetorian Guard for the Roman Emperor Diocletian.
George refused Diocletian's command to persecute Christians and thereby refused to recant his own Christian faith, which resulted in his torture and beheading. That was in 303 AD. His burial site remains a pilgrimage destination in Lod, central Israel.
The dragon myth initially was attached to St. Theodore Tiro in the ninth and 10th centuries, then transferred to St. George in the 11th century. Some sources attribute its origins to Roman Thracian horseman iconography of a serpent entwining the Tree of Life.
In the end, St. George stands as his own symbol in front of the St. George Catholic Church and the city that has grown around him.