Fort St. Jean Baptiste (1804 Transfer)

Natchitoches changed flags twice on April 26, 1804, within about an hour. Around 11 a.m. the Spanish flag came down and the French flag went up. An hour later the French flag was lowered and the American flag raised while soldiers saluted and guns fired. Commandant Felix Trudeau gave up the post, held by 32 Spanish soldiers, to Edward D. Turner, who had been ordered to take command. The old fort was in ruins, so Turner built a new one, Fort Claiborne, nearby.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natchitoches Historic District — steps away
  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 — 0.2 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 — 8.1 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

• The American Cemetery — steps away
• Steel Magnolias — steps away
• Judge Porter House — steps away
• Northwestern State University — steps away