Natchitoches

Natchitoches is a city in northwestern Louisiana on the Cane River, founded in 1714 by the French-Canadian explorer and soldier Louis Juchereau de Saint-Denis as Fort St. Jean Baptiste, making it the oldest permanent European settlement in the present-day state, established to promote trade with local Native American tribes and with Spanish territory in Mexico. It developed into a cotton market whose commercial importance declined after 1825, when the Red River shifted course away from the town, a change that inadvertently preserved much of its 18th and 19th century architecture and gave the historic district its distinctive French and Creole character.