City of Gretna

Gretna counted 717 people in 1850 and 3,332 in 1890. The 1913 incorporation absorbed the part of McDonogh lying in Jefferson Parish, and the police department dates from the same year. The population peaked at 24,875 in 1970 and has stayed near 17,000 since 1990. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Gretna police and deputies blocked people on foot from crossing the Crescent City Connection out of New Orleans. Mayor Ronnie Harris defended the blockade, and four federal civil rights suits followed.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 1.9 mi
  The Garden District's 1833 cemetery of about 1,100 family tombs, closed to visitors in 2019 and reopened on October 1, 2026 for small guided tours run by the Preservation Resource Center.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 3.1 mi
  A National Park Service unit created in 1994 to tell where jazz came from, with free programs and a visitor center in the French Quarter and park land inside Louis Armstrong Park.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 3.2 mi
  A French Quarter museum and research center founded in 1966, whose 2015 Purchased Lives exhibition took on New Orleans' place as the largest slave market in antebellum America.
• The Cabildo — 3.2 mi
  The Spanish town hall on Jackson Square, finished in 1799, where Louisiana changed flags in 1803 and where the state Supreme Court sat in the same room until 1910, Plessy v. Ferguson among its cases.

More markers nearby

• Centennial Marker — 0.5 mi
• Derbigny Plantation — 0.5 mi
• Gretna City Hall — 0.5 mi
• David Crockett Firehall — 0.6 mi