Los Adaes State Historic Site preserves the location of an 18th-century Spanish presidio and mission near the old frontier between Spanish Texas and French Louisiana. For much of the 1700s it served as the capital of Spanish Texas, which gives the site more historical weight than its quiet rural setting suggests.
There are no dramatic standing ruins, so come for the frontier history, interpretive context, and the chance to connect Natchitoches with the wider colonial borderlands.