Heritage Park

Heritage Park sits in Kenner's Rivertown historic district as a collection of replicas: a packing shed from the 1900s, an ice house, a blacksmith shop, a gas station from the 1930s. A covered bridge crosses a small pond. The centerpiece is a reproduction of St. Mary's, the first Catholic church in Kenner.

New Orleans grew as a port city because the French chose high ground along a bend in the Mississippi in 1718, a spot that commanded the entire river valley and offered access to Lake Pontchartrain through Bayou St. John. The city became the largest port in the American South by the nineteenth century, exporting cotton and farm products. Kenner, upriver, grew in that corridor. Heritage Park reconstructs the material evidence of that expansion — the structures that served the working life of a town in the river's economy.

The park opens Saturdays from 11am to 3pm during Rivertown museum hours. Admission is free.