Little evidence of a Spanish flavor stayed behind when the colorful colonialists bade farewell to Natchez in 1798.

Nothing much of Spanish architectural style rose up during the almost 20 years they governed the Natchez region.

Tastes in food brought from their motherland did little to influence the menus of the mostly Anglican population in their charge at Natchez.

And their language and religion may have been the official ones but were not adopted at large by the Natchez colony.

Still, it is true that the Spanish era in Natchez, 1779 to 1798, was a time of significant change and development, perhaps in great part because of the benevolent manner in which the rulers governed.

The Spanish, following weak attempts by the French and British to establish colonies at Natchez, wrote and enforced laws and, perhaps most important, laid out the town.

The Spanish hired a surveyor to organize a pattern of streets running both parallel and perpendicular to the Mississippi River.

They squared off the area between the river bluff military promenade along Broadway on the west and what today is Martin Luther King Street on the east; and from Orleans Street on the south side of town to what is today Monroe Street on the north.

In those square blocks, merchants and bankers set up their shops and offices; doctors, lawyers and barbers practiced their professions. Government offices opened. Moreover, many residents built their houses along some of those streets.

From small farms and plantations people came to the town to do their shopping, to sell their goods and to socialize.

The town, in fact, from the beginning, served a population from a wide area, from its inception as a Spanish-ruled hub to its days as part of the U.S. Territory, 1798 to 1817.

The dons had long departed in 1803, when the city of Natchez was incorporated. As we pause to consider the 200 years that have passed since then, however, we should not forget their influence.

Natchez was the focal point of a territory that was in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the southwestern outpost of a growing young nation.

As the area grew, the town thrived and faded with an economy that rose and fell in rhythm with cotton crops and river trade.

Economic downturns such as the Panic of 1837 interrupted the town’s growth; so did the Civil War and Reconstruction.

After Reconstruction a resurgence in agriculture and the river trade revived the commercial center and made Natchez once again the shopping center for people from miles around.

Through the two centuries after the Spaniards created the squares and cut the streets, merchants and bankers have played key roles in keeping he town alive.

The drug stores, clothing stores, printing shops, furniture stores, general merchandise stores, financial institutions, government offices and downtown houses of worship have remained centered and vital to locals.

The handsome commercial center of downtown Natchez remains key to the vitality of the community; a heart beating in rhythm with its people in good times and bad. With a bow to the dons, we say a hearty happy anniversary to our fair city.

Joan Gandy

is community editor of The Democrat. She can be reached at (601) 445-3549 or by e-mail at

joan.gandy@natchezdemocrat.com

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