f you didn’t already know that New Orleans was a real American city, you’d swear, after hearing its strange and fascinating story, that someone was making it all up.

New Orleans might have more nicknames than any other major American city, and most of them speak to its renowned reputation for good times and laissez faire attitude, including “The Big Easy” and “The City That Care Forgot.” But New Orleans has had more than its share of hardships. Sitting at the mouth of the Mississippi River, the city has always been at the mercy of that mighty river’s whims, and the delta region is prone to oppressive heat, heavy rain and hurricanes and was, until relatively recently, a breeding ground for mosquitoes and disease.

What the mighty Mississippi brings in the way of unpredictability and potential disaster, though, it makes up for by nourishing the delta with its rich sediment deposits and even richer deposits of trade and commerce from upriver and from the sea. The very earliest settlers of the region recognized its potential, and thus began New Orleans’ long and embattled history of trying to maintain a stable living environment in one of the most inhospitable (though crucially important) places imaginable.

French Influence
In 1699, France claimed Louisiana and soon began laying a city foundation in what is now the French Quarter neighborhood of modern-day New Orleans. In fact, when you step inside the French Quarter, you’re literally walking into a living museum. The French Quarter of today was the New Orleans of 1722 and remains the exact 6-by-13-block area of its inception in 1722.

New Orleans has always been one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the country. Louisiana is the only state that was once a French royal colony, and New Orleans is the only U.S. city in which French was once the predominant language. Photograph courtesy of NewOrleansOnline.com

Any fledgling city that lies, on average, eight feet below sea level and near the mouth of the Mississippi is going to have to anticipate all kinds of change, and change is exactly what happened to New Orleans in the decades that followed.

Enter Spain
In the unusual secret Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1762, Louisiana was ceded by France’s King Louis XIV to his Spanish cousin, King Charles III. The treaty was so secret, in fact, that colonists living in Louisiana at the time didn’t find out that they were no longer French subjects until almost two years later!

St. Louis Cathedral, located in the heart of the French Quarter, is the oldest continuously active Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United States. Photograph courtesy of David Richmond

Spanish rule didn’t last long, but its imprint was indelible. First of all, a great fire in 1788 destroyed more than 850 of the city’s buildings. While the city was rebuilt soon afterward, another fire in 1794 destroyed hundreds more of the city’s French-inspired structures. The Spanish were eventually able to rebuild, and much of today’s New Orleans architecture is a remnant of Spanish influence during this time.

Back to France, Then Supersized
In 1800, with yet another “secret” treaty, the Treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain ceded Louisiana back to France. At the time, Spain was worried that the ever-expanding Americans to the north would eventually want the area by any means necessary, and Spain didn’t want the fight. Napoleon avoided any conflict by selling the Louisiana territory to the United States in 1803 for a paltry $15 million dollars — one of the greatest real estate bargains in history. As everyone expected, Americans flooded the area, and from 1803 until 1861, the city’s population went from 8,000 to almost 170,000. By 1810, New Orleans was the fifth largest city in the United States, and by 1830, it was the third largest U.S. city.

Where Y’at Now?
Nowadays, New Orleans continues to make all kinds of history, mostly because it is history. The Crescent City has approximately 40,000 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic places. More than 10 million people visited the city in 2004, and the traditional Mardi Gras celebration is world-renowned, with seemingly half of the world attending it in New Orleans’ relatively tiny land area.

New Orleans is surrounded by coastal marshes and barrier islands, making the delta one of the most important fishing centers in the country. In fact, Louisiana provides 25 percent to 35 percent of the nation’s total fishing catch and is first in harvests of oysters and crabs. Photograph courtesy of Linda S. Reineke.

Unlike most museums, though, New Orleans takes a hands-on approach to its past. The New Orleans Streetcar line, for instance, is the oldest operating rail system on earth. And the French Quarter, the living remnant of New Orleans’ birth in the early 1700s, is one of the oldest residential communities in the United States. It is home to 4,000 residents, yet it accepts more than 15 million visitors to its neighborhood every year.

ASA Annual Meeting
When you visit New Orleans this year for the ASA 2005 Annual Meeting, you’ll no doubt feel welcome almost everywhere you go. This is a city that embraced the French and the Spanish, voodoo and Catholicism, Creoles and Cajuns, aristocrats and slaves. New Orleans is as vibrant and rich as the river that both nourishes it and threatens to sink it, and for all its turbulent changes and upheavals, one thing remains constant: its spirit. Maybe it’s the well-known fact that the city is sinking that makes New Orleans such a fun-loving and carefree city — enjoy it while you can. Or maybe the city, because of its past, has a feeling that no matter what happens, New Orleans will pull through. Either way, the Crescent City always seems to hold true to one of its favorite sayings, “Laissez les bons temps rouler.” So when you visit, don’t disappoint the natives who have worked so hard to make New Orleans what it is. Blend in for a few days, and “Let the good times roll.”

The “City of Chefs” boasts more than 3,000 restaurants, many of which are considered the finest in the world. Photograph courtesy of NewOrleansOnline.com