Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2006 - (Page 80) wo days before Christmas in 1721, French administrators officially relocated the capital of the Louisiana colony from Biloxi to a nascent riverside settlement called Nouvelle Orleans, founded three years earlier by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. The decision capped years of debate regarding where best to locate the headquarters for the commercial exploitation of Louisiana. It also breathed new life into Bienville’s struggling outpost, perched strategically astride the continent’s greatest river but vulnerably amid a fragile, dynamic deltaic plain spilled out only recently upon the southern fringe of North America. When hurricanes Katrina and Rita frayed that fringe and reminded us just how dynamic this region is, pundits worldwide pondered how a major American city could have been founded on so precarious a site. Some saw no future for the metropolis, save for its relocation to a safer locale. In essence, the circa-1700 debate of the French colonials rages again — under very different circumstances, but with similar factors at play. The circa-2000 debate about New Orleans invites a review of the geographical history of the city and region, a closer look at exactly what the skeptics are saying, and a frank assessment of the future. We conclude by returning to the circa-1700 debate: how did a major city come to be founded on this troubled site? T A detail of The city of New Orleans, and the Mississippi River: Lake Pontchartrain in distance, circa 1885, a lithograph by Currier & Ives. courtesy of the Library of Congress 80 2
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