In 1714, Louis Juchereau de St. Denis arrived on the Red River with a detachment of marines and built a wooden storehouse in a Natchitoches Indian village — the oldest permanent European settlement in what would become the Louisiana Purchase. Fifteen miles west, Spain answered in 1721 with a presidio and mission at Los Adaes among the Adaes Indians, which became the capital of the province of Tejas from 1729 to 1773. On paper the two powers were rivals. In practice, French and Spanish traders worked the same trails and ignored the prohibitions their distant governments issued. When Spain closed Los Adaes in 1773, the displaced settlers moved west and founded Nacogdoches, Texas. A bronze statue of St. Denis still stands on Front Street at the northern terminus of El Camino Real — the Spanish royal road from Mexico City — marking the place where two empires chose commerce over confrontation and accidentally built something that lasted.
