La Salle's Landing - 1682

The claim was made far downriver. With Arkansas guides and more than forty Europeans and Native people, La Salle reached the mouth of the Mississippi near present-day Venice and on April 9, 1682 planted a post declaring Louis XIV's sovereignty over the country, which he named La Louisiane. Along the lower river he met Quinipissa people living beside the Koroa; in 1700 the Bayagoula massacred the Quinipissa and the Mougoulacha. La Salle overshot the river's mouth on his return in 1684 and was shot by one of his own men in Texas in 1687.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Destrehan Plantation — 7.3 mi
  A River Road house begun in 1787 where, in January 1811, a tribunal of five slaveholders tried people who had risen on the German Coast, and where an exhibit now tells the revolt.
• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 10 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.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 11 mi
  New Orleans' oldest surviving city of the dead, opened in 1789 after the fire of 1788 and the burial place of Homer Plessy, reachable only on a guided tour since March 2015.
• Congo Square — 11 mi
  The 2.35-acre corner of Louis Armstrong Park where, from 1817, New Orleans confined Sunday dancing by enslaved people to one place, and where crowds of hundreds gathered to drum, dance and trade.

More markers nearby

• First World Championship Heavyweight Prize Fight Monument — steps away
• Cannes Brûlées — steps away
• La Providence — 1.7 mi
• LaFreniere Plantation — 2.6 mi