In 1802, Denis de La Ronde was appointed to Louisiana (New Spain)'s governing authority, the "Cabildo", at the behest of his late brother-in-law, Andrés Almonaster y Rojas, to succeed him as "Regidor Perpetuo", Councilman for Life. (Spanish bureaucratic offices were a form of property, purchased from the Crown, and could be inherited.) In 1805, during the U.S. territorial period, along with other local investors, he made plans to build Versailles along the Mississippi River and to then cut a barge canal through some dozen miles of swamp to the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, where they planned to build another town, to be called "Paris." The intended communities were named after Paris and Versailles in France and were meant to recreate the French style. Denis de La Ronde envisioned that this Versailles would overtake New Orleans in size and popularity.