The Natchitoches Parish Old Courthouse

A fire in 1933 did the old courthouse its worst damage, and the repairs shaped what visitors see. The tower was lowered, the clock removed and the roofline over the stairway cut down, and apart from the clock those changes were never undone. A 1961 renovation lowered ceilings, split rooms and added aluminum-and-glass doors; a restoration in the 1970s reversed that work and added central heating, an elevator and three outside clocks. When the new courthouse opened in 1939-40 it had no courtroom, so court kept meeting here until the new building was adapted.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natchitoches Historic District — 0.5 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 — 0.6 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 — 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

• Basilica of the Immaculate Conception — steps away
• First Mass in Natchitoches — steps away
• The American Transition — steps away
• Great Red River Flood of 1945 — steps away