Natchitoches Historic District

Three dates carry the district's recognition: a National Register listing in June 1974, a boundary increase in November 1980 and National Historic Landmark status in April 1984. The nomination file puts it at about 210 acres, while later descriptions say about 280, running west to Fourth Street and taking in only Williams Street on the east bank of the old channel. More than 200 historic structures stand inside, and the nomination called its bousillage, mud and moss or deer hair packed between posts, the largest concentration in Louisiana.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natchitoches Historic District — 0.7 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 — 0.8 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 — 13 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

• Louis Juchereau de St. Denis (1676-1744) — steps away
• Natchitoches Indians — steps away
• Roque House (circa 1797) — steps away
• Ducournau Building — steps away