Beach & Bingo in Biloxi

Today we arrived in Biloxi, Mississippi and are now calling the Cajun RV Resort home.  We're right across the road from the beach.

The Biloxi area was the site of the first permanent settlement in French Louisiana at Fort Maurepas in 1699, although with transfer of control of the area to the Spanish and then the United States, Biloxi ceased to be a center of government or commerce.  Its three main sources of economic activity are tourism, fishing and gambling.  Biloxi's casino history dates back to a period in the 1940s, when open, if technically illegal, gambling took place here. Open gambling ended during the 1950s. Legal gambling was reintrocued in the 1990's.

Biloxi and the rest of the Mississippi Gulf Coast has sometimes been known as the "Poor Man's Riviera." Its fishing industry is focused primarily on shrimp boats and oystering.  In 1959 Biloxi was the site of Mississippi’s first public assault on racial barriers when Gilbert Mason, a physician in Biloxi, went swimming at a local beach with seven other black friends. They were ordered to leave by a city policeman. This initiated a series of protests led by Mason, known as the Biloxi Wade-Ins, which ultimately led to the desegregation of the beaches of Biloxi.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina damaged Biloxi extensively, destroying 90% of the buildings along the beach. Several floating casinos were torn off their supports and thrown inland.  The hurricane killed 53 people in Biloxi, however, Biloxi lost thousands more among its displaced residents.  Where the city had a population of 50,000 in the year 2000, in 2012 the population had shrunk by about 6,000 to 44,000.

To give you an idea of the damage inflicted by Katrina, here is a photo of the beach just across from our campground, as it looked right after Katrina:

Sharkheads, a local souvenir shop that is still standing on the beach across from our campground, looked like this right after the storm:

Today, the top two floors are intact, but the bottom two floors have been opened up down to the beams and are not useable space.

Despite the damage, the community has done a lot to recover.  Most of the beachfront land near our RV park is empty, devoid of anything but the original parking lots, concrete foundations or grass.  The city is actively trying to promote redevelopment of these areas.

The beach looks nearly pristine.  This photo of the beach across from us show essentially the same stretch as the photo above of post-Katrina debris:

After we got settled, we took a walk along the beach and explored some of its unique features.  One thing we noticed right away was the complete absence of sea waves.  The water reminded us of a bay, or perhaps a lake.  This is because Biloxi's beach lies on the MIssissippi Sound, a large bay encircled by barrier islands forming what is now protected as the Gulf Islands National Seashore.  We had explored the eastern end of it a year ago when we stayed in Navarre, Florida, to the east.  Weather permitting, we hope to explore this western end of the national seashore this coming week.

As we walked along the beach, we found these unusual bumps in the sand along the water's edge.  Our best guess is that they are made by sand crabs:

Here's a photo of the unusually clear, calm and blue water of the Gulf.  The water is extremely shallow, and Kathy could walk far out on a sand bar.  A flock of shore birds feeds at the end of the sand bar to Kathy's left in the photo below:

The day was very cold and windy, and it's still winter here, so very few people were on the beach.  However, one young mother had brought her two- and three-year old daughters down to play in the sand.  They left this universal message - "I love the beach" - written in the sand by the water, for us to find as we walked by:

Back at the campground after our walk, we warmed up with some yummy gumbo we bought in Baton Rouge, and then walked over to the campground community center for a rousing hour or so of Bingo.  David came away a big winner, claiming his prize of Mardis Gras beads with a huge green alligator pendant:

...AND, tomorrow is FAT TUESDAY itself!  We hope to see yet a third Mardis Gras celebration, weather permitting, and if we do, we'll share it on tomorrow's blog.