The 985 area code is southeast Louisiana outside New Orleans — the Northshore towns of Slidell, Mandeville, Covington, and Hammond across Lake Pontchartrain, the river parishes upstream of Kenner, and the bayou country of Houma, Thibodaux, and Morgan City — split from 504 on February 12, 2001, and never overlaid.
If a 985 rings with no name attached, start with the Northshore and the bayou — a Slidell contractor, a Houma oilfield supplier, a Hammond campus office. Three digits put a number on the map; whose hand is dialing it is a separate question.
985 in brief
| On the record | 985 |
|---|---|
| Live since | February 12, 2001 — assigned by NANPA on September 13, 2000 |
| Cut from | 504, New Orleans — the third split of Louisiana’s 1947 original |
| Second code on top | None; 985 has never been overlaid |
| Towns on the map | Slidell, Covington, Hammond, Houma, Thibodaux |
| Dialing habit | Seven digits inside 985; ten digits into a neighboring code; 1 + ten on toll calls |
| Numbers run out | Second quarter of 2103, per NANPA’s April 2026 exhaust analysis |
Everything around the city, minus the city
NANPA’s Planning Letter PL-242 carries the split on a single map. Area A, keeping 504, is the hatched core: New Orleans, Kenner, St. Bernard, and a handful of marsh rate centers — Lake Catherine, Yscloskey, Delacroix, Jesuit Bend, Lafitte. Area B, the new 985, is the rest of the sheet, and it wraps that core on three sides.
North across the lake sit Slidell, Pearl River, Lacombe, Mandeville, Madisonville, Covington, Folsom, and Bush, with Bogalusa, Franklinton, Angie, Pine, and Mount Hermon farther up toward Mississippi. West of them run Hammond, Ponchatoula, Amite City, Independence, and Kentwood. Up the river from Kenner come LaPlace, Reserve, Garyville, Edgard, Norco, Luling, and Paradis.
The southern half is the bayou: Thibodaux, Raceland, Lockport, Larose, Golden Meadow, Leeville, and Grand Isle down Bayou Lafourche; Houma, Dulac, Montegut, and Gibson in Terrebonne; Chackbay, Napoleonville, Labadieville, and Pierre Part; Morgan City and Patterson at the western edge. The lower delta went too — Pointe à la Hache, Port Sulphur, Buras, and Venice — while Jesuit Bend, upriver in the same parish, stayed with the city. The prefix list even includes a rate center named simply Offshore.
The New Orleans code it left behind is the subject of its own guide; this page is about the ring that took the new digits.
Why Louisiana cut 504 twice in three years
504 was one of the 1947 originals and covered the whole state for a decade, until 318 took the north and west — NANPA’s database records it in service on January 1, 1957. The second cut waited forty-one years: Planning Letter PL-123 (June 9, 1998) announced that the Louisiana Public Service Commission had approved a split, with the New Orleans LATA keeping 504 and the Baton Rouge LATA becoming 225 on August 17, 1998.
PL-123 also printed a forecast. The new 225 was expected to exhaust in ten years; the trimmed 504, in five. Five years was not runway enough, and on June 21, 2000, the commission approved another geographic split — the third for 504. NANPA assigned 985 on September 13, 2000, and issued PL-242 on October 20, 2000 (revised November 13, 2000), describing the new code’s territory as the area surrounding the basic New Orleans local calling area.
For 504, Louisiana never reached for an overlay. Each time, the city kept its digits and the region around it took new ones — the split-versus-overlay choice is laid out in our area code explainer — and 985 became the last piece to leave.
February 12, 2001: cutover, test number, permissive window
985-980-TEST — 8378 on the keypad — is the shortest summary of the changeover: a recorded announcement that let carriers confirm their routing, answering from January 7, 2001, five weeks before the split, until October 22, 2001, the morning permissive dialing ended. Between those dates the clock PL-242 set ran from 12:01 a.m. Central on February 12, 2001, after which a call bound for the new territory completed whether it was dialed with 504 or 985.
Permissive dialing for wireline carriers ended at 12:01 a.m. Central on October 22, 2001, after which a call dialed with the old code went to an intercept recording. Wireless carriers were given more time: prefixes marked with an asterisk on PL-242’s list could keep accepting either code into October 2002, and PL-301 (September 11, 2001) added further wireless prefixes to that extended window at the commission’s request.
The prefix tables attached to PL-242, current as of October 18, 2000, are the record of who went where — every NXX that stayed with New Orleans and every one that moved to Houma, Hammond, Slidell, and the rest.
Does a 985 number count as New Orleans?
On a map, nearly — the code starts where the city’s basic local calling area stops. In practice the display says something different. Metairie and Kenner are 504; Slidell across the lake, LaPlace up the river, and Houma down the bayou are 985. A caller reading the screen in Mandeville sees a neighbor in 985 and the city in 504, and the distinction is one residents know.
The dialing plan reinforces it. Under the scheme PL-242 published for mandatory dialing, a local call within 985 takes seven digits, while any call into a different code — including local calls across the lake into 504 — takes all ten, with a 1 in front when it is toll. A Slidell office dials seven digits on a local call to Covington and ten to downtown New Orleans.
The 988 list 985 never made
When the FCC designated 988 as the national crisis line, every area code that still dialed seven digits and had 988 in use as a prefix had to convert to ten-digit local dialing. NANPA’s Planning Letter PL-556 (January 8, 2021) lists 82 such codes. Louisiana appears twice, as 337 and 504; 985 does not appear at all.
PL-242 had foreshadowed that outcome two decades earlier: its list of prefixes remaining in 504 includes a 988 exchange in New Orleans, and no 988 appears among the prefixes moving to 985. So the city converted — permissive ten-digit dialing from April 24, 2021, mandatory from October 24, 2021, with 988 itself live on July 16, 2022 — while the region around it kept the old habit.
NANPA’s database, in its August 30, 2026 file, still shows the plan PL-242 wrote: seven digits for a local call inside 985, ten for a local call into another code, 1 plus ten for toll. Baton Rouge’s 225 area code keeps the same seven-digit habit, which makes the two pieces 504 shed in 1998 and 2001 the two Louisiana codes that still dial the way New Orleans used to.
The forecast that jumped 83 quarters
Second quarter of 2103. That is the 985 line in NANPA’s 2026-1 NPA Exhaust Analysis (April 2026), and the October 2025 edition had said the third quarter of 2082 — a move of 83 quarters — nearly 21 years — in a single revision, which NANPA attributes to reduced historical and projected demand.
The report’s own history columns show how steep the climb has been: second quarter of 2057 in the October 2023 study, fourth quarter of 2057 in April 2024, third quarter of 2058 in October 2024, third quarter of 2072 in April 2025, third quarter of 2082 in October 2025, and now 2103. Roughly 46 years of projected life added in two and a half years of studies.
Only two entries in the April 2026 report moved further out — Alabama’s 334/483, by 153 quarters, with a footnote explaining that a new area code had been added to it, and Pennsylvania’s 724/878 overlay complex, by 126 quarters. Among standalone codes with no overlay partner, 985’s outward jump was the largest printed in the study; the next was Florida’s 772, at 64. It also carries the latest date of any Louisiana code: 337 reads 2053, 225 reads 2054, 504 reads 2061, and the 318/457 complex reads 2095.
Nothing has moved since. The four entries NANPA reopened on July 6, 2026 were all in Texas; the relief-planning status report dated August 30, 2026 has a dozen codes under study and no Louisiana entry; the 36-month exhausting list stops at three names — 657/714, 828, and 956. The database marks 985 as neither in jeopardy nor in relief planning. The region PL-123 once expected to drain its parent code within five years now has a supply forecast that runs past the turn of the next century.
Two landfalls on one area code
The 985 map is also where Katrina and Ida came ashore. The National Hurricane Center’s report on Katrina puts the storm’s Gulf landfall near Buras at 1110 UTC on August 29, 2005, at the upper end of Category 3, with a final landfall near the mouth of the Pearl River — Buras is a 985 rate center on PL-242’s map, and the Pearl River’s mouth marks the state line just east of Slidell. Sixteen years later to the day, the center’s report on Ida records landfall at Port Fourchon, at the seaward end of Bayou Lafourche, at 1655 UTC on August 29, 2021, as a Category 4.
A mobile number is not tied to a building. A 985 handset rings the same in a Houston hotel or a Baton Rouge shelter as it does in Houma — which is part of why the digits read as home to the people who carry them.
What 985 digits earn on the bayou
Northshore and bayou markets screen unfamiliar numbers hard, and an out-of-state display gets the shortest hearing. A 985 caller ID reads as a neighbor from Covington to Houma — the answer-rate mechanics are in our local presence dialing guide. The caveat runs the other way too: caller-ID spoofing can paint 985 onto a call from anywhere, so a familiar code on the screen is a claim, not a credential.
SIPNEX is an FCC-licensed carrier under its own authorization, not a reseller, and holds local DID numbers by rate center across the 985 footprint — Slidell, Covington, Hammond, Houma, Thibodaux, and the smaller exchanges as inventory allows — delivered into any PBX or dialer over SIP trunking. Outbound calls are signed at the A level under the company’s own STIR/SHAKEN certificate, with Robocall Mitigation Database registration on file and toll-free handled through its own RespOrg.
Sorting out the 985 area code
Which parishes and towns does the 985 area code cover?
985 wraps New Orleans on three sides: the Northshore, the river parishes, and the bayou country. NANPA’s PL-242 map puts Slidell, Mandeville, Covington, Hammond, Ponchatoula, Bogalusa, Franklinton, Amite City, and Kentwood on the north side; LaPlace, Reserve, Norco, and Luling along the river; and Thibodaux, Houma, Raceland, Larose, Golden Meadow, Grand Isle, Napoleonville, Morgan City, and Patterson to the south and west. The lower delta — Port Sulphur, Buras, Venice — is 985 as well. New Orleans, Kenner, and St. Bernard stayed 504.
Why was the 985 area code split off from 504?
Because the 1998 split had bought New Orleans only five years. NANPA’s Planning Letter PL-123 forecast that 504, trimmed of Baton Rouge in August 1998, would exhaust in about five years. The Louisiana Public Service Commission approved a further geographic split on June 21, 2000, NANPA assigned 985 on September 13, 2000, and PL-242 scheduled the cutover for 12:01 a.m. on February 12, 2001 — the city kept 504 and the surrounding region took 985.
Do 985 area code numbers still dial seven digits locally?
Yes. NANPA’s database lists seven-digit dialing for local calls within 985, ten digits for local calls into another code, and 1 plus ten digits for toll. The 988 crisis-line conversion of 2021 did not reach the code: PL-556’s list of 82 area codes forced onto ten-digit dialing names Louisiana’s 337 and 504 only, because 985 had no 988 prefix in use. Calls from Slidell or Houma into New Orleans have taken ten digits since mandatory dialing began in October 2001.
How long will the 985 area code last before exhausting?
Until the second quarter of 2103, per NANPA’s April 2026 NPA Exhaust Analysis — the latest date of any Louisiana code. The projection moved 83 quarters in one revision, from the third quarter of 2082 in the October 2025 study, on reduced demand. The July 6, 2026 revisions changed four Texas entries only, and 985 appears on no relief-planning, jeopardy, or 36-month exhausting list as of August 30, 2026.
Will a 985 number work from an office in another state?
It will. Assignment is by rate center rather than by street address, and SIP carries the number to whatever desk answers it, in any state. SIPNEX provisions local DID numbers per exchange — Slidell, Covington, Hammond, Houma, Thibodaux, and others where inventory permits — and routes them into whatever phone system already answers, under its own FCC carrier authorization. With exhaust forecast for 2103, supply is not the constraint.
Across the lake, up the river, and down the bayou, one set of digits reads as home, and SIPNEX provisions it: 985 rate-center numbers under its own FCC carrier license, SIP trunking built for dialer load, each outbound call signed at the A level on its own STIR/SHAKEN certificate, toll-free through its own RespOrg. Rates are listed; the contact form reaches the desk; (833) 665-2220 rings it.
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