Spanish Fort, New Orleans
|
Fort St. John
|
|
Ruins of the Spanish Fort
|
|
 
|
|
| Location | Bayou St. John off Robert E. Lee Blvd., New Orleans, Louisiana |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 30°1′20″N 90°5′0″W / 30.02222°N 90.08333°WCoordinates: 30°1′20″N 90°5′0″W / 30.02222°N 90.08333°W |
| Area | 0.2 acres (0.081 ha) |
| Built | 1808 |
| NRHP Reference # | 83000530 |
| Added to NRHP | February 11, 1983 |
Spanish Fort, also known as Old Spanish Fort, Fort St. Jean, and Fort St. John, is a historic place in New Orleans, Louisiana, formerly the site of a fort and later an amusement park.
Archaeological investigations have discovered that the fort location was a site of the Pre-Columbian Marksville culture dating back to circa 300 CE, with continued occupation afterwards. A large shell midden was used as the base under the early Colonial fort. [1] [2] [3]
The Colonial era fort protected the Lake Pontchartrain entrance of Bayou St. John. The first small fort here was erected by the French in 1701, before the founding of the city of New Orleans, to protect the important trade route along Bayou St. John. After Louisiana passed to Spanish control, a larger brick fort was constructed at the site of the neglected old French fortification; this was known as San Juan del Bayou. Louisiana passed back to France and then to the hands of the United States. The fort was decommissioned in 1823.
The land was bought by private developers, and became a popular amusement park, known as "Spanish Fort" or "Old Spanish Fort". It featured restaurants, a casino, a resort hotel, dancing pavilions, an alligator pond, and in its later decades amusement rides such as the "Scenic railway", a roller coaster. A steam railway, and later an electric streetcar system, connected the lakeside resort with the center of the city. It was especially popular during the summer for the cooling breezes of the Lake. It was billed as the "Coney Island of the South".
...
Wikipedia