As Mobile’s Carnival season kicked into gear with its first parade of the year, city leaders made sure no one driving into town could miss the message: Mardi Gras started here.
Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson unveiled new signage around the city just ahead of the season’s opening parade, including a large sign installed above the marquee at the Mobile Civic Center on Canal Street, just west of Interstate 10, proclaiming Mobile the ‘Birthplace of Mardi Gras.’ In a video message posted around the time the sign went up, Stimpson framed the effort as reclaiming a title he said rightfully belongs to Mobile, extending a friendly nod to New Orleans while making clear where he believes the tradition truly began.
Mardi Gras was first observed in the New World by French colonists in 1703 at Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff, the original site of Mobile’s founding settlement, more than a century before New Orleans’ Mardi Gras celebrations took shape. That history has long been a point of civic pride in Mobile, and the new signage campaign was designed to make sure visitors driving into the city see the claim before they even reach downtown.
In addition to the Civic Center sign, the city installed billboards at several high-traffic points, including on Interstate 65 northbound between Dauphin Street and Springhill Avenue, and along Interstate 10 eastbound near Texas Street. City officials said the signs would remain in place through the middle of February, covering the bulk of Mobile’s Carnival season, which each year draws visitors from across the Gulf Coast for weeks of parades, balls and family celebrations leading up to Fat Tuesday.
The branding push arrived alongside the city’s first parade of the season, the Conde Cavaliers, which rolled through downtown Mobile to kick off weeks of festivities. Local mystic societies and parading organizations continued rolling in the days that followed, part of a tradition in Mobile that predates any similar celebration elsewhere in the United States.
For Mobile, the signage campaign was about more than nostalgia. City leaders have increasingly framed Mardi Gras as an economic driver for the region, pointing to the tourism, hospitality and retail activity generated each year by Carnival season. Reinforcing Mobile’s historical claim to the holiday, officials said, is part of protecting that economic identity as the city continues promoting itself as a Gulf Coast destination.