The Jefferson Highway

The Jefferson Highway ran from Winnipeg to New Orleans and was inspired by the east-west Lincoln Highway; its nickname was Palm to Pine. Louisiana designated the whole route State Route 1 in 1921, a status that lasted until the 1955 renumbering. When the U.S. highway system arrived in 1926, it split the Louisiana road among four routes, and the Natchitoches-to-Mansfield stretch was left out. The southern end in New Orleans is marked by a granite obelisk donated by the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter and installed in April 1918.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site — steps away
  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.
• Natchitoches Historic District — 0.3 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.
• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 7.9 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

• El Camino Real de los Tejas (Jefferson Street) — steps away
• Dr. John Sibley — 0.2 mi
• Steel Magnolias — 0.2 mi
• Northwestern State University — 0.2 mi