Basilica of the Immaculate Conception

The parish dates to 1728. The first church stood inside the fort between 1729 and 1733, a second by 1738 near the present American Cemetery, a stone third in 1771 and a fourth in 1785 at Front and Church Streets. A brick fifth burned in the 1838 fire; the sixth, finished in spring 1839, became the first cathedral of the Diocese of Natchitoches, created in 1853. The present church was begun in 1857, completed between 1900 and 1905, lost cathedral status on 6 August 1910, and became a minor basilica on 22 February 2009.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natchitoches Historic District — 0.5 mi
  The riverfront blocks of the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase, founded in 1714 at a Natchitoches village, with a brick-paved Front Street, Cane River frontage and the largest bousillage construction in the South.
• Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site — 0.6 mi
  A reconstruction of the 1716 French fort beside the Natchitoches village, with a palisade of nearly 2,000 pine logs, a chapel and storeroom, and living-history programs, open Wednesday to Sunday.
• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 8.4 mi
  Oakland and Magnolia, two Cane River cotton plantations kept as they stood, told through the enslaved families who worked them, the 1864 and 1804 freedom seekers and the tenant farmers who stayed into the 1960s.
• Los Adaes State Historic Site — 12 mi
  The Spanish presidio that was the capital of Texas from 1729 to 1770, some 15 miles from French Natchitoches, now an archaeological site where Native pottery is the most abundant find.

More markers nearby

• First Mass in Natchitoches — steps away
• The Red River Campaign — steps away
• Site of Fort Claiborne — steps away
• Roque House (circa 1797) — steps away