America's Original Mardi Gras City — Mobile's Mardi Gras celebration is older than New Orleans', the USS Alabama battleship is one of the most accessible WWII museum ships in America, and the Azalea Trail blazes pink through a city that's quietly one of the South's most beautiful in spring
Mobile, Alabama is the oldest city in Alabama (founded 1702) and the birthplace of Mardi Gras celebrations in North America — Mobile's mystic societies began celebrating the pre-Lenten festival in 1703, 15 years before New Orleans was founded. The city's French, Spanish, and British colonial heritage left a complex architectural and cultural legacy. The USS Alabama (BB-60), a WWII South Dakota-class battleship docked in Battleship Memorial Park, is one of the most well-preserved WWII battleships in the United States. Mobile's Azalea Trail blazes pink every March through historic districts. Af…
Fort Louis de la Mobile was established by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville in 1702 — the first permanent European settlement in present-day Alabama and briefly the capital of French Louisiana before New Orleans was founded in 1720. Mobile passed to Britain (1763), Spain (1780), and the US (1813). Joe Cain reignited the Mardi Gras tradition after the Civil War in 1866, famously parading as a fictional Chickasaw chief to mock the occupying Union soldiers. The Clotilda, the last known slave ship to arrive illegally in the US (52 years after the slave trade was banned), was discovered submerg…