ew Orleans, the largest city in the state of Louisiana, is situated at the mouth of the Mississippi River and is surrounded on three sides by water. Its story is unique and its location no accident, but a feat of engineering. In 1718, in order to protect France's holdings in the New World previously claimed by explorer Robert Cavalier de La Salle, King Louis XIV dispatched Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur d'Iberville to Louisiana to find suitable places to build forts. In 1698, Iberville left France and set out for the New World along with this brother Jean Baptiste LeMoyne, Sieur d'Bienville. After first landing at Mobile Bay, then at several islands along the way, he reached the mouth of the Mississippi River. The next day, on Shrove Tuesday, he began traveling up the great waterway to a small bayou that he christened Mardi Gras Bayou in honor of that important day. A cross was planted there to mark the spot. Sailing further up the river, he arrived at what is today the capital city of Baton Rouge, and set up a small settlement. Settlements were soon set up at Ocean Springs and Biloxi, both in Mississippi. Iberville returned to France, and in his absence, Bienville built several forts, one at English Turn below present day New Orleans. In addition, concessions of land were soon granted on the west bank of Bayou St John.

The exploitation of the new colony was assigned to wealthy merchant Antoine Crozat in 1712, but after five years of failure to develop anything, he asked to be released from the charter. Scotsman and financial wizard John Law took over the concession in 1717, and formed the Company of the West. Law developed a fraudulent scheme to entice settlers to invest in the colony. The "Mississippi Bubble", as it was later called, was a plan invented by Law to sell stock in Louisiana land to noblemen and rich middle class businessmen, on the promise that they would gain riches in the gold, silver, diamonds, and pearls found there. One of the company's first duties was to lay out a town on the Mississippi River, its location to be "thirty leagues up the river…which one may reach by the river and by Lake Pontchartrain." The area chosen by Bienville was at the point where the river makes a wide crescent, was closest to the lake, and possessed an easy portage route along Bayou St John, a small stream that flowed into the lake to the north. Here was laid out in 1722 by Pierre Le Blond de la Tour, royal engineer to Louis XIV, and his assistant Adrien de Pauger, a small medieval-style town with a rectangular grid pattern of streets surrounding a central square or place d'arms. Similar to the customary method of laying out European towns, a church, government office, priest's house, and official residences were then set around the central place, and a series of earthen ramparts dotted with forts circled the entire town. The tiny colony was given the name Nouvelle Orleans or New Orleans in honor of Philippe, duc d'Orleans, regent of France after the death of Louis XIV. This early city is known today as the French Quarter or Vieux Carre' (Old Town), and the place d'arms is now called Jackson Square. The site of many ceremonies, the square also served as military parade ground.

Along the dirt streets were erected rude huts of cypress wood filled with moss and clay, a method of building that was to persist for years throughout Louisiana. A primitive wooden levee was also built in order to hold back the Mississippi, but this didn't prevent the periodic flooding that occurred, and which proved to be one of the many hardships that the people of this backwater settlement would endure. Other problems were the oppressive heat during the summer months, the mosquito infestations, and the general rot that took place in a humid environment. But despite all these obstacles to growth, the growing colony attracted settlers who came in hopes of finding riches in this new land. Of course they found no gold or silver, but there were furs aplenty and some of the land was farmable. Bienville brought many men to the colony to work as builders, trappers, farmers, and to fight off hostile Indian tribes.