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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings

	FORT TOULOUSE (Fort Jackson) Alabama
Elmore County, on a gravel road, at the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, 4 miles southwest of Wetumpka. -Fort Jackson State Historic Site

Ownership and Administration. State of Alabama; Department of Conservation.

Significance. In 1814, after defeating the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Andrew Jackson and his Tennessee Militia constructed Fort Jackson on the site of Fort Toulouse, a French fort, whose moat remained. From its construction in 1717 until the end of the French and Indian War, in 1763, Fort Toulouse had been the offensive-defensive eastern outpost of French Louisiana. Situated just below the southern tip of the Appalachian Highland, at the junction of the two main tributaries of the Alabama River, it protected the French settlements from Mobile Bay westward to New Orleans. It was also the spearhead of the French effort to wrest control of the present Southeastern United States from the Spanish and English. By the Treaty of Paris, in 1783, it passed to the United States.

After Jackson had constructed Fort Jackson on the site, in August 1814 it was the scene of the Treaty of Fort Jackson that officially ended the Creek War. The Creek Nation surrendered half its land, and the treaty formed the boundaries of the remaining land so as to pacify the Creeks by separating them from the Spanish, to the south; the Choctaws, to the southwest and west; and the Chickasaws, to the west and northwest.

In September 1814 about 100 of the militiamen at the fort, claiming that their term of enlistment was over, marched back to Tennessee. Because this mutiny seriously weakened the garrison, Jackson captured and tried the men and executed six of them. During his later campaign for the Presidency, Jackson's opponents used this act to attack him. The fort was garrisoned until 1817, when settlers staked out a town nearby and the fort was abandoned.

Fort Toulouse is a Registered National Historic Landmark relating primarily to French exploration and settlement.

Present Appearance. The Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers follow nearly parallel courses for some distance just above their junction, and form a narrow peninsula a mile long and only a few hundred yards wide. A privately owned tract that extends upstream from the junction includes the site of a prehistoric Indian village, where one large mound is discernible and the ground is liberally sprinkled with sherds. East of the tract is the 6-acre Fort Toulouse tract, owned by the State.

Adjoining the tract on the south and east is private property containing the Isaac Ross Cemetery, which dates from at least the War of 1812. In 1897 about 200 bodies were relocated from this cemetery to the national cemetery in Mobile. Most of them were the remains of men who had been assigned to Andrew Jackson's army, but some may have been Frenchmen. Amateur archeologists have carried on excavations at the Indian village site, but not at the State-owned Fort Toulouse tract. The fort area includes two monuments and the remains of what appears to have been a powder magazine.

NHL Designation: 10/09/60