Qualla: Old Mobile Site

Old Mobile Site: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean-François Chéreau, Public domain. Twenty-three young women, sick with yellow fever after a harrowing Atlantic crossing, stepped off the ship Pelican onto the muddy banks of the Mobile River in 1704. They had been recruited from French orphanages and convents, promised husbands and a new life in Louisiana. What they found instead was a primitive wooden fort surrounded by swamp, a settlement already struggling to feed itself, and cornbread instead of the French bread they craved. These "casquette girls" -- named for the small trunks they carried -- had arrived at La Mobile, the first capital of French Louisiana and France's answer to England's Jamestown. The site, now buried in the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta near the community of Le Moyne, Alabama, was home to Fort Louis de La Louisiane from 1702 until a catastrophic flood forced its abandonment in 1711.

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Image: Jean-François Chéreau | Public domain

Old Mobile Site: A Continent Up for Grabs

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Rivera, CC BY-SA 4.0. The founding of La Mobile was an act of imperial strategy. After the Spanish Armada's defeat in 1588 weakened Spain's grip on the New World, France and England raced to claim the interior of North America. In 1682, La Salle had floated down the Mississippi and claimed the entire ...

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Image: Michael Rivera | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Mobile Site: The Le Moyne Brothers

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Rivera, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, born in Montreal to a French emigrant family, was a war hero of King William's War who had attacked English positions in North America with devastating effectiveness. His seamanship and ferocity made him the natural choice to lead the Gulf expedition....

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Image: Michael Rivera | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Mobile Site: Life Inside the Palisade

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Rivera, CC BY-SA 4.0. A 1704 census paints a vivid picture: 180 men, 27 families with ten children, eleven Native American slave children, a guardhouse, a forge, a gunsmith shop, a brick kiln, and eighty one-story wooden houses. The square fort had cannons at each corner and enclosed quarters for offi...

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Image: Michael Rivera | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Mobile Site: Drowned and Burned

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Rivera, CC BY-SA 4.0. Complaints about the site mounted. The land drained poorly, with standing water lingering for weeks after each rain. The settlement sat too far from Mobile Bay for practical access. Then, in the spring of 1711, the river settled the argument. A massive flood rushed into Fort Loui...

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Image: Michael Rivera | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Mobile Site: Unearthing La Mobile

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. The site lay forgotten for centuries. In the 1970s, a group of industrial workers led by James C. "Buddy" Parnell formed the Old Mobile Research Team and, using aerial photographs and French colonial maps, located the true settlement in February 1989. Previous searchers had been ...

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Image: Jonathunder | Public domain