Avery Island (historically French: Ile Petite Anse) is a salt dome located in Iberia Parish, Louisiana, United States, about three miles (5 km) inland from Vermilion Bay, which in turn opens onto the Gulf of Mexico. A small human population resides on the island. Long before its namesake Avery family settled there in the 1830s, American Indians discovered that Avery Island’s verdant flora covered a precious natural resource—a massive salt dome.

There the Indians 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 records maintained prior to 1999 in the Southern Historical Collection at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Petite Anse Island, renamed Avery Island in the late 19th century, was purchased by John Craig Marsh of New Jersey in 1818. Besides mining salt, Marsh operated a sugar plantation on the island's fertile soil.

A daughter, Sarah Craig Marsh, married Daniel Dudley Avery in 1837, thus uniting the Marsh and Avery families. Daniel Dudley Avery hailed from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and was a jurist. In 1849, Daniel became co-owner of his inlaw's sugar plantation and salt mines, and in 1855 he became sole owner.

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