American Cemetery

The second French fort in Natchitoches stood here. So did the parish church. This is the oldest cemetery in the Louisiana Purchase — burials date to the colonial era, the earliest marked grave to 1797. Approximately two thousand graves now, and Natchitoches, founded in 1714, never moved. Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, who established the city, died in 1744. He is believed buried beneath where the old parish church stood. No headstone survives. Dr. John Sibley, Revolutionary War veteran and Thomas Jefferson's appointed Indian agent, is buried here. So is Theodore Pierson, the mayor assassinated on St. Denis Street in 1922. John Gideon Lewis, African American editor and civic leader, has the cemetery's only mausoleum. The cemetery was featured in the funeral scene of *Steel Magnolias*. It is nearing capacity. Open dawn to dusk, free.