Chalmette Monument

Construction of a monument honoring Andrew Jackson and his troops marked an early effort to recognize the battlefield's importance and preserve it for future generations. In 1852, the Louisiana legislature appropriated funds to purchase land at the battlefield and build the monument there, but the project was plagued by funding problems for decades and was finally completed in 1908. Maintenance was later turned over to the Chalmette Chapter, United States Daughters of 1812, and in 1939 the site became part of Chalmette National Historical Park and the National Park Service. A photograph from around 1900 shows the monument still partially built, and Civil War soldiers wrote home about camping in its shadow. The monument stands about 100 feet tall; when Alfred Rudolph Waud drew the unfinished structure in 1871, plans had called for a height of nearly 150 feet, but an engineer's test around 1900 found that the foundation could not support that weight.

Chalmette, Louisiana · United States