Louisiana Timeline
1541 Hernando de Soto led a group of Spanish explorers into the lower Mississippi River area in search of gold. Instead they found Indians including the tribes Atakapa, Caddo, Chitimacha, and Tunica.
1542 De Soto died in the Louisiana area. Spaniards made no further exploration of the area.
1682 Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle led 50 Frenchmen into the lower Mississippi River area. They came down the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes region.
9 April 1682 La Salle claimed the entire Mississippi Valley for France. He named the region Louisiana in honor of Louis XIV, king of France.
1699 Louisiana became a French royal colony. Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, founded a settlement at Ocean Springs, Mississippi. It became the capital of Louisiana.
1702 The capital moved to Fort Louis de la Mobile. Iberville was the governor of the colony.
1712 France gave exclusive trading rights to Antoine Crozat. This made the colony a proprietary colony instead of a royal colony.
1714 Louis Juchereau de St. Denis established the town of Natachitoches. It was the first permanent town in Louisiana.
1717 Crozat's trading rights were transferred to John Law.
1718 Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, the governor of the colony, began building New Orleans.
1722 New Orleans became the capital.
1731 Louisiana again became a royal colony.
1762 France secretly ceded to Spain the Isle of Orleans, which included New Orleans and the area of Louisiana west of the Mississippi River.
1764 French colonists learned of the transfer of the colony to Spain. They became angry.
1768 A band of Frenchmen drove out the Spanish governor.
1769 Spain took firm control of the colony.
1760-1790 About 4,000 French settlers from Canada arrived in Louisiana. Their decedents became known as the Cajuns.
1775-1783 The American Revolutionary War took place. Spain allowed the Continental Congress to use New Orleans as a base.
1795 Etienne de Bore developed a method of processing sugar on a large scale, thus beginning the sugar industry in Louisiana.
1800 France secretly persuaded Spain to return Louisiana.
November 1803 Spain returned the Louisiana region to France.
20 December 1803 France sold Louisiana and the Mississippi River valley to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase.
1804 Congress divided the area acquired during the Louisiana Purchase to make it easier to govern. One part became the territory of Orleans. The northern part of Louisiana became the District of Louisiana.
1805 The Territory of Orleans and the District of Louisiana became the Territory of Louisiana.
September 1810 American settlers living in West Florida, then a possession of Spain, revolted. They organized the Republic of West Florida. It included part of what is now eastern Louisiana.
October 1810 American troops occupied the republic. President James Madison declared that the region belonged to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
4 April 1812 The Territory of Louisiana was renamed the Territory of Missouri.
30 April 1812 The Territory of Orleans became the 18th state of the United States. It was renamed Louisiana. William C. Clairborne was the first governor and New Orleans was the first capital.
December 1814-January 1815 The British tried to capture New Orleans during the War of 1812.
8 January 1815 The Battle of New Orleans took place.
1815-1860 Thousands of settlers arrived in Louisiana.
1830 The capital moved to Donaldsonville.
1831 The capital returned to New Orleans.
1850 The capital moved to Baton Rouge.
26 January 1861 Louisiana seceded from the Union.
21 March 1861 Louisiana joined the Confederate States of America.
1862 Union naval squadron under David G. Farragut bombarded the forts guarding New Orleans.
1 May 1862 Union General Benjamin F. Butler occupied New Orleans.
1862 Opelousas was made the capital.
1863 Shreveport was made the capital.
25 June 1868 Louisiana was readmitted to the Union. Henry C. Warmoth became the governor.
14 September 1874 A group from New Orleans tried to seize the government in a battle. They were unhappy about the high taxes. Their attempt was unsuccessful.
1877 Federal troops were withdrawn by President Rutherford B. Hayes. They Reconstruction ended.
1879 Engineers deepened the mouth of the Mississippi River. It enabled large oceangoing ships to dock at New Orleans.
1882 Baton Rouge was made the capital.
1883 New Orleans had railroad connections with all major cities in the United States.
1901 Oil was discovered near Jennings and White Castle.
1916 Natural gas was found near Monroe.
1927 A disastrous flood from the Mississippi River struck northen and south-central Louisiana.
1928 Huey P. Long was elected governor. He practically became the dictator of the state. He developed many programs of public works and social welfare.
1939 Many leaders of the Long group were convicted for fraud and other crimes.
1940 A reform group took control of the government.
1944 New Orleans opened the International House.
1940s-1950s A number of factories spring up around the state. People began moving out of the rural areas into the cities so they could work in the factories.
1960 The first black students entered all-white elementary schools in New Orleans.
1960s Louisiana tried to integrate all the schools, restaurants, and libraries.
1961 The old Michoud Ordnance Plant was chosen by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to produce the Saturn Rock. The plant was renamed the Michoud Assembly Facility.
1963 The Michoud Assembly Facility produced its first rocket.
1963 The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet opened. The canal gave shippers a 44 mile short cut between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.
1968 Ernest N. Morial became the first black since the Reconstruction to win an election the Louisiana House of Representatives.
1969 Michoud's Saturn 5 rocket launched the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon.
1980s Louisiana suffered a huge economic decline due to the drop in oil prices. The state unemployment rate became the highest in the country.
September 1986 Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment which gave portions of Louisiana's offshore oil revenues to the newly formed Louisiana Education Trust Fund.
August 1992 Hurricane Andrew struck Louisiana causing severe damage.
Works Cited
Harold A. Peterson and Timothy F. Reilly. "Louisiana." Worldbookonline.com.
Ratnikas, Algis. Today in History. Online. http://timelines.ws/TODAY.HTML.