Flowers for Natchitoches, LA

Before New Orleans, before the Purchase itself, there was Natchitoches — founded in 1714 as a French trading post on the Red River, the oldest permanent European settlement in the whole territory. The river later shifted and left behind Cane River Lake, and the town curled along its bank: the brick-paved Front Street with its wrought-iron balconies, the riverbank promenade, the bridges that carry you across to the residential side. That compact historic core is easy to serve — a bouquet for a bed-and-breakfast on Jefferson Street, meat-pie-shop thank-yous, anniversary roses for homes overlooking the water. Push out University Parkway and you reach Northwestern State, which fills the coolers at homecoming and graduation; push south down the Cane River road and you are in the plantation country and film-set landscape that made this town famous.

Other Louisiana cities.