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VERIFY: Is Mobile, Ala., home to the first Mardi Gras in the U.S.?

Alabama marketing campaign rekindles rivalry

NEW ORLEANS -- The Big Easy and Mobile have always had something of a friendly rivalry about which city can claim to be home to the first Mardi Gras in the United States.

Now, a marketing campaign from Alabama tourism officials has rekindled that debate.

A billboard in Slidell lets drivers know they are "114 miles from America's original Mardi Gras." There are several other billboards that dot interstates between Mobile and New Orleans, giving the distance between each specific location and the Azalea City.

Whose claim to Mardi Gras birthrights is right? It’s not a cut-and-dry answer.

The explorers who settled the Gulf Coast brought the ancient Christian holiday with them.

Among them were the French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, who on March 3, 1699, celebrated Mardi Gras with his men at a site in modern-day Plaquemines Parish.

Iberville, who was 38 at the time, wrote in his journal that he and his men camped one night at a bend near the mouth of the Mississippi River, said Tulane University geographer and historian Rich Campanella, who has written several books on the history of New Orleans.

Iberville named the spot Pointe du Mardi Gras, and a nearby canal was named Bayou du Mardi Gras. Plaquemines leaders installed near the site in 1971.

“There’s no dispute among historians accessing primary sources that the first time the term (Mardi Gras) is mentioned in Colonial Louisiana documents was March 3, 1699,” Campanella said.

A few years later, in 1703 and 1705, documents recorded a Mardi Gras celebration in Mobile, Campanella said.

“It’s at that point that people making the Mobile argument say they have records showing the first celebration. At which point people (in New Orleans) say, ‘Yeah, but we have the first mention,’” Campanell said.

And therein lies a problem: the argument delves into semantics.

“What does one mean when one says Mardi Gras ‘happened’?” Campanella asked. “It is when it’s first mentioned, first celebrated, or first celebrated with parades?”

Errol Laborde, editor of New Orleans Magazine and a Carnival historian, agreed that the question of where the first Mardi Gras in America was celebrated is a difficult question to answer.

“It’s complex,” he said.

One thing that’s certain, though, is that each city is responsible in some way for the other’s Fat Tuesday festivities.

Laborde said the Mistick Krewe of Comus, which first paraded in 1857, had founding members who came to New Orleans from Mobile and brought some Mardi Gras traditions with them.

“From Rex to even Muses today, they were all influenced by Comus,” Laborde said. “The style of parade and using the word ‘krewe,’ all of that evolved in New Orleans, but it kind of spread back (to Mobile).”

“Mobile influenced that first Comus parade,” he continued. “Comus influenced everything else.”

We can neither verify the claims that Mobile was the site of the first Mardi Gras in the U.S., and we cannot debunk them either.

But it’s probably safe to say that those of us in New Orleans are in the best city for the celebration.

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