Bienville: The Father of New Orleans

The Father of New Orleans

Every city has a founder, and New Orleans has Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville — a Canadian-born French colonial officer who looked at a swampy crescent bend in the Mississippi River and saw a city that would become one of the most important in the Western Hemisphere.

Bienville was born in Montreal in 1680, the youngest of a large and prominent family of French Canadian explorers and soldiers. He entered the French Navy at twelve and sailed with his older brother Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville on expeditions exploring the Gulf of Mexico coastline and the Mississippi River Delta beginning in 1699. While his brother got the glory, young Bienville got the knowledge — an intimate understanding of the geography, the river, and the land that would serve him for the rest of his life.

In 1717, Bienville proposed establishing the capital of French Louisiana at a crescent-shaped bend in the Mississippi that he believed was safe from hurricanes and tidal surges. Permission was granted, and in the spring of 1718, Bienville founded New Orleans. He named it for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, the regent of France.

The early years were brutal. The site was swampy, disease-ridden, and barely habitable. But Bienville persisted, and in 1720-21, he brought in engineer Adrien de Pauger to design the street grid of the French Quarter — the plan that still defines the city three centuries later.

Bienville served as governor of Louisiana four separate times across four decades, navigating the treacherous politics of French colonial administration while building a city from nothing. He dealt with floods, epidemics, conflicts with Native American nations, and the constant threat that the whole enterprise would be abandoned.

He was eventually recalled to France for the last time in 1743 and died in Paris in 1767, having spent most of his adult life building and defending the city he'd created. He's often called the Father of Louisiana, and for once, the title isn't an exaggeration. Without Bienville's vision and stubbornness, New Orleans simply doesn't exist.