A Trip to the Gulf Coast

For six weeks this past February and March, Laura and I traveled in our camper van to the Gulf of Mexico coast, starting in the Florida Panhandle near Pensacola and traveling westward through Mobile and  New Orleans to the Louisiana-Texas border. Then we turned inland, driving through the lower Mississippi River valley to Vicksburg, then back home along the historical Natchez Trace Parkway through  Mississippi and Tennessee. This was a great trip through parts of the country we were minimally acquainted with. We saw historical sites, marshes and swamps, cotton and sugarcane fields, river levees and shorelines, New Orleans, Mobile and lots of small towns. Did we go to the beach? A few times; lots of this coast is marshland, estuaries and dense forest. Stay on the path! There’s lots of snakes and alligators and scratchy plants.

This region is rich in frontier and Civil War history; the landscapes and legacies of slavery are readily apparent. Working at retirement speed, I will plan some future posts about those aspects of our trip. This post is about the coastal areas and New Orleans.

Large sections of the Gulf Coast east of New Orleans are highly developed; some areas have miles of beachfront high rises. But there are lots of stretches that are preserved as parks and wildlife refuges and national seashore and protected barrier islands. Around New Orleans and to the west there are few sandy beaches and most of the coast is difficult-to-access marshlands.

I had not previously thought of the Gulf Coast as a military frontier, but for much of the 1800s it certainly was. An elaborate system of forts and artillery batteries was constructed after the War of 1812 to protect the Gulf harbors of Pensacola and Mobile, and to defend the mouth of the Mississippi River, these locations being of profound economic importance to the young United States. These defensive sites were decommissioned and in some cases abandoned in the early 1900s as the advent of aerial warfare made them obsolete.  Many are now protected by the National Park Service and as state parks.

When visiting Fort Pickens, located on the tip of a barrier island near the Florida-Alabama border, I was surprised to learn that Geronimo, the Apache war leader and shaman, had been imprisoned there starting in 1886. Geronimo was a skillful military leader, and his raiding bands targeted settlers in the American southwest for years until he was captured by the US Army.  He was responsible for the deaths of many settlers and was apparently the most hated Indian of his time. He was also a defender of his  Apache people who were being exterminated by both the Mexican and US armies.  Geronimo’s mother, wife, and three young children had been murdered by Mexican troops in 1851.  In any event, I found it very sad to contemplate the fate of a Plains Indian confined in a prison built into sand dunes at the tip of a barrier island on a gulf of an ocean all presumably unknown to his people. Geronimo’s presence was apparently helpful for the Pensacola economy as businessmen there had the idea to have him serve as a tourist attraction, and hundreds of visitors daily were let into the fort to lay eyes on the infamous Indian in his cell.  He died in captivity.

We spent a week in and around New Orleans and enjoyed it. There is a  quote from the playwright, Tennessee Williams, “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.” I haven’t been to Cleveland, perhaps he is being unfair. But New Orleans is certainly a unique place steeped in history with interesting architecture, distinct spoken accents, and highly localized cultural traditions. 

This trip was five months ago now. As you may recall, we are currently living in Raleigh until January, babysitting our grandson Joseph while his parents work. He is now seven months old and our baby is rapidly turning into a little boy.  Alas, the days of the stationary diaper change seem to have ended just this week, and we now have a very mobile subject who can twist and roll in multiple directions.  He is a happy baby who is tons of fun and we are enjoying him.

Joseph at six months old