Iberville anchored at Ship Island on February 10, 1699 — twelve miles offshore, nothing on the mainland yet. Three days later his men reached the coast. By April, his commandant Jean de Sauvole had built Fort Maurepas on the north shore of Biloxi Bay: the first permanent European settlement in the Mississippi Valley, the first capital of French Louisiana. It lasted barely three years before the capital moved to Mobile. No structure remains — only a historical marker on the bluff above where it stood. What the French left behind wasn't stone; it was sequence. This coast staged the entire colonial project before New Orleans existed, before Mobile was settled, before Natchitoches was founded. The city of D'Iberville still carries the founder's name. The bay still carries the name of the Biloxi people who were here when he arrived. The fort is gone. The names stayed.
