As Alabama marks its bicentennial, archaeologists are quietly continuing work at a much older piece of Deep South history — the original French settlement of Mobile, founded in 1702 and abandoned nine years later.
Students and volunteers from the University of South Alabama scrape away hard-packed dirt at house sites on the western bank of the Mobile River, part of the Old Mobile historic site overseen by the Center for Archaeological Studies. Gregory Waselkov, the center’s director, leads the work at what was once known as La Mobile and protected by Fort Louis de La Louisiane.
The site sits on property that is also home to a DuPont agricultural chemical plant, and access is limited. Occasionally a busload of visitors tours the site through Historic Blakeley State Park.
The colony was founded by Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. The fort and town were built at 27-Mile Bluff, a spot that seemed safe but proved vulnerable to flooding. In 1710 an English raider burned Port Dauphin, and the following year a flood forced everyone into the trees. The decision was made to move downstream to present-day Mobile and burn the old fort.
Little of the fort survives — it was built shallowly of logs on thin topsoil. But since the site was rediscovered and excavations began in 1989, USA researchers have identified at least 55 house sites spread over 80 acres. ‘Because the town moved, we had this amazingly ideal situation where it’s all still here, essentially,’ Waselkov said.
Unlike Mobile and New Orleans, where newer buildings were raised on top of the originals, Old Mobile was left undisturbed — making it a rare window into the earliest days of French colonial life in the region.