Biloxi's flag is understated: midnight blue, the city's lighthouse in white, its name in large letters and, beneath it, "established 1699". Nothing exuberant. Yet Biloxi carries within it one of the most dramatic stories of the Gulf of Mexico.
Biloxi is one of the oldest American cities. Fort Maurepas, founded in 1699 by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, is the first permanent capital of French Louisiana, long before New Orleans. For decades, this coast was the heart of the French presence in North America, a maritime trading post linking the Caribbean, Canada and the mother country. The very name "Biloxi" comes from the Biloxi people, a tribe with a rare language.
The shrimp and oyster industry employed thousands of immigrants, Vietnamese, Croatian, Sicilian, who made the Gulf a unique maritime melting pot.
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck Biloxi with unbelievable violence. The storm generated a 25-to-30-foot surge that erased the waterfront. 53 people died in the city. Entire neighborhoods vanished. The casinos that had revitalized the local economy in the 1990s were wrecked or devastated. Reconstruction took a decade. The lighthouse, though, held. Standing on the seafront since 1848, it took the surge head-on, and it cost more than $400,000 to relight it in 2010. The old flag served until 2016. The new one appeared in 2017, and that is the silhouette it carries: the emblem of a place that starts over, once again.