Fort Assumption

Bienville built the fort as a base for a campaign against the Chickasaw in 1739, bringing French soldiers along with many Native and Black troops to the fourth Chickasaw Bluff. Fort Assumption had three bastions facing the land and two on the river, with seven terraces down the slope. The campaign failed, and the fort was destroyed in the spring of 1740. Some researchers think it stood on or near La Salle's earlier Fort Prudhomme. The neighborhood around the site still goes by French Fort.

What the plaque says

Fort Assumption Near this point, at the highest part of the bluff, on Assumption Day Aug. 15, 1739, this fort was erected by Sieur de Bienville, French Governor of Louisiana. This was the first structure built by Europeans in Shelby County, and the third such in Tennessee.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 1.1 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 1.1 mi
  The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, kept as a museum of the civil rights movement from the nineteenth century to today.
• Beale Street — 1.6 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.
• Sun Studio — 2.2 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.

More markers nearby

• Fort Pickering — steps away
• Fort Pickering (Protecting Memphis) — steps away
• Memphis Martyrs — 0.3 mi
• WLOK Radio Station — 1.2 mi