In 1698, Louis XVI, King of France, was able to achieve a long-held dream of locating the Mississippi River. He dispatched Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur d’Iberville and Jean Baptiste, LeMoyne, Sieur d’Bienville to locate the river and establish claim for France all territories drained by it.
Spain learned of the quest and sent its ships from its colony at St. Augustine to claim the territory first, so when d’Iberville and d’Bienville entered Pensacola Harbor, the Spanish were already building forts on Santa Rosa Island. The French proceeded north and west along the coast and failed to detect Mobile Bay but landed on Ship Island on February 10, 1699.
After establishing contact with the natives at Biloxi four days later, the explorers learned that the “Father of Waters” lay to the west. They camped on the banks of the Bay of Saint Louis on April 28, proceeded westward, and located the elusive river on March 2. They spent the rest of the month of March exploring the river as far north as Baton Rouge before returning downriver toward home. It was on the return trip that they made contact with an Indian tribe who possessed a letter left with them fourteen years previously by Henri de Tonti who had descended the river from Montreal. Thus, France was able to claim all the lands drained by the river, forty-two percent of the continental United States.
Returning to their vessels at Ship Island, the party again camped on the Bay of Saint Louis on March 30. They spent the month of April building Fort Maurepas at present day Ocean Springs. Iberville returned to France leaving thirty-five men and his younger brother Bienville under the command of M. deSauvole, who died shortly thereafter, and Bienville assumed command of the colony.
On August 25, 1699, Bienville explored the Bay of Saint Louis and named it for Louis IX, the King of France, who led both Crusades into the Holy Land, that being the date of his canonization in 1297. In December Bienville established the first colony at Bay Saint Louis, consisting of a sergeant and fifteen soldiers, thus creating the third colony located on the Gulf of Mexico. It was another eighteen years before he gave up on his efforts to find deep-water access to either of the French colonies and built the fort and New Orleans.
The importance of the central Gulf diminished as European traffic went instead to New Orleans. For the next eighty years these French Catholic settlers along the Gulf lived among the Indians, adopting their customs and laws. Many married Indians or Negro women who were brought in from Santo Domingo. They were hunters and fishermen. They had no churches, schools, or government.
After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the territory was opened to homesteaders and in a three year period thirty-three hundred people moved into the area, mostly from Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas. These Anglo-Saxon Protestants settled across the Coast from Mobile to the Bay of Saint Louis, but there was no bridge across the bay for another 110 years after statehood in 1817. Bay Saint Louis was incorporated by the first act of the first legislature of the State of Mississippi on January 4, 1818. (The city was called Shieldsboro from 1802 until the name Bay Saint Louis was restored by the legislature in 1875.) However, the colony remained staunchly French, relatively isolated from the Americans but kept its close connections with its French New Orleans cousins. Subsequently, Bay Saint Louis became the summer home of wealthy New Orleanians, thus re-enforcing the French culture of the city which it retained into the early 20th Century.
The cosmopolitan and European attitude of New Orleans has shaped the culinary, artistic and social customs of the people of Bay Saint Louis, which has become renowned for fine dining, acclaimed artists, and congenial atmosphere. Financial affluence in Hancock county, augmented by the building of the Stennis Space Center in 1963, has brought new residents and further cultural diversity.