At the Mobile (Alabama) Carnival Museum, we learned that this legendary party did not start in New Orleans, its most famous city, but here, in Mobile.

King Louis XIV, alarmed that the British had the American colonies and Spain had established a foothold near what is now Pensacola, Florida, ordered explorers to grab France’s piece of the pie. They established Fort Louis de la Mobile and called it Mobile La Mer Mystic, or the Mother of Mystics, a name it still wears proudly.

It is believed that in 1703, Mobile held the first Mardi Gras in the New World.

Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday, or Tuesday Fat, which my fickle little brain had never acknowledged, even after years of high school and college French classes. Mon dieu!