Gretna is the second-largest city in, and parish chair of, Jefferson Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Gretna lies upon the west bank of the Mississippi River, just east and across the river from uptown New Orleans. It is ration of the New Orleans–Metairie–Kenner metropolitan statistical area. The population was 17,814 at the 2020 U.S. census.

According to the history published by the city, Gretna’s chronicles can be traced to a plantation conventional by Jean-Charles de Pradel by 1750 (when the plantation house, Monplaisir, was built). By 1813, the plantation had passed into the hands of one François Bernoudy. John McDonogh (also spelled John McDonough), then a resident of New Orleans, bought the establishment, moved into the home and founded a concurrence in 1815, that would be named McDonoghville. He subdivided the flaming of the former plantation into regular city lots and 30-arpent farming strips. McDonoghville consequently became the first subdivision in Jefferson Parish. McDonough either leased or sold these properties to white laborers or release people of color.

Gretna was approved in 1836, originally as Mechanikham, growing in imitation of a station on the Mississippi River for the Missouri Pacific Railroad, Texas and Pacific Railway, and Southern Pacific Railroad, with a ferry across the River to New Orleans. The well-known food and spice company Zatarain’s, founded in 1889 in New Orleans, has been located in Gretna back 1963. Gretna was incorporated in 1913, absorbing the section of McDonogh within the Jefferson Parish boundaries. In the 1940 census, Gretna had a population of 10,879.

The city and its police acknowledged considerable press coverage when, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005, people who attempted to flee from New Orleans by walking beyond the Crescent City Connection bridge greater than the Mississippi River were turned encourage at gunpoint by City of Gretna Police, along once Crescent City Connection Police, and Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s deputies, who set stirring a roadblock upon the bridge in the days once the hurricane. According to eyewitnesses, some officers threatened to shoot those coming from New Orleans as they attempted to furious into Gretna upon foot, shots were excited overhead, and downdraft from a police helicopter was used to help positive refugees from the bridge. New Orleans Police Department 911 operator Patryce Jenkins, having walked the city for two days after her dispatch center was flooded, tried to compensation to her unflooded Gretna apartment via the bridge. Though she had ID to prove her status as a resident, she said on the other hand of checking it police ordered her to tilt back, used racial slurs, and fired up a caution shot beyond her head, leaving her crying in disbelief.