Photo by Henry Cancienne

Founded in 1714, Natchitoches is the oldest permanent European settlement in the Louisiana Purchase. Its wonderful historic commercial corridor overlooking the Cane River Lake is still a hub of activity, its shops and restaurants bustling and brick-paved Front Street thronged with tourists. It’s one of the state’s best examples of the felicitous blending of cultural heritage and economic development.

It’s no wonder this cradle of Creole culture attracts more than a million visitors a year, especially for its immensely popular Christmas Festival of Lights. Natchitoches for generations has benefited from the dedication of scores of hard-working individual preservationists and cooperating local and national preservation organizations who treasure its unique history and heritage with a ferocity not to be taken lightly.

Gov. Earl Long found this out in 1958 when he sent a highway crew to remove the bricks and blacktop historic Front Street. Ladies of the newly formed Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches literally lay down in front of the bulldozers. When highway officials frantically phoned for instructions, the governor asked how many women were involved. “Over 100,” he was told, at which point Uncle Earl capitulated and ordered the ’dozers turned around for home.

Today, picturesque Rue Front, or Front Street, still proudly wears its bricks, and the city-based Natchitoches Main Street program oversees a revitalization effort that sensibly partners with preservation, economic development and tourism organizations to ensure broad-based support and funding to encourage not just rehabilitation of historic structures but also the creation of hundreds of new jobs in new business ventures.

Since 1993, when Natchitoches officially became a state Main Street Community, the commercial district building vacancy rate, once as high as sixty-five percent, has dropped to a mere one percent, and investment in rehabilitation and restoration in the district has soared into the millions of dollars.

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