by Troy A. Broussard (Author), Frank J. Borne Jr. (Author)
In 1682, when French explorer Robert de La Salle landed his canoe expedition on the banks of the Mississippi River to find a massacred Native American village, he never could have imagined that 300 years later the site would have grown into a city of over 75,000 residents and a major international airport. Louisiana's fifth largest city, Kenner was built in the shadow of New Orleans based on a history intertwined with French and antebellum plantations, agricultural farms, and rural subdivisions. Against a backdrop of Indian, French, Spanish, American, and Confederate control, it suffered river floods, hurricanes, epidemics, Civil War occupation, and governmental infighting, through which a rich heritage of freed slaves, French, Irish, German, and numerous Italian immigrants and settlers persevered and prospered. A host to vanished tribes, famous explorers, renowned entrepreneurs, world-class boxers, Confederate and Union troops, US presidents, a pope, and countless celebrities, as well as being the site of tragic airline crashes and record hurricanes, Kenner's history is a tale worth telling.