New Orleans
The indigenous people called it Balbancha (“land of many tongues”) and they inhabited the rich delta lands between the Mississippi River (“Father of Waters”) and Okwa-Ta (present day Lake Pontchartrain) for the same reasons that would later attract Europeans: abundant ecological resources and convenient network of navigable river, bayous, and bays. The land was first claimed by French explorers in 1682. The city of La Nouvelle-Orleans was founded by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville in 1718 upon the slightly elevated banks of the Mississippi River approximately 95 miles above its mouth. A grid of streets was laid out called the Vieux Carré which is today’s French Quarter with a large square known as Place d’Armes (today’s Jackson Square) near the banks of the river. By 1723, this outpost became the capital of the French Colony of Louisiana.
Following their defeat to the British in the French and Indian Wars, the French ceded Louisiana to Spain in order to keep it out of the hands of the British. For the remainder of the 1700s, Louisiana was a Spanish colony, and Nueva Orleans functioned as an important trading and cultural partner with Cuba, Mexico, and beyond. It was during the Spanish colonial era that New Orleans transformed from a village-like environment of wooden houses to a city of sturdier brick buildings with urban infrastructure. Two disastrous fires in 1788 and 1794 resulted in new architectural codes resulting in splendid Spanish Colonial-style buildings such as the Cabildo fronting today’s Jackson Square. Other Spanish contributions include wrought-iron balconies, patios, courtyards, and above-ground cemeteries. The Spanish also liberalized policies governing slavery, which enabled the dramatic growth of a caste of free people of color. This contributed to the creation of the Creole culture which blends French, Spanish, African, and Native American heritages into something uniquely Louisiana.
The Spanish found Louisiana a huge financial burden as the United States became more expansion minded so in 1800, they gave it back to France. Just a fewyears later on December 20, 1803, Napoleon sold the entire Louisiana colony, including New Orleans, to the United States as part of the $15 million Louisiana Purchase. Although no longer a French colony, residents in the new American city of New Orleans held tight to their Francophile ways, including language, religion, customs, and a complex social hierarchy. These vestiges of colonial France remain in New Orleans today.
During the War of 1812, New Orleans was considered strategically important because of its location at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Andrew Jackson arrived in New Orleans in December 1814 where he immediately declared martial law and began building defensive position of earthworks and cotton bales. Although the Treaty of Ghent had already been signed to end the war, British forces in route to New Orleans did not receive the news and on January 8, 1815 a force of over 8,000 British troops attacked the city. The forces under Jackson’s command held their ground inflicting heavy loses to the British forces compared to few American loses. For his heroic defense of the city of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson rose in national popularity to become the seventh president and the city dedicated Jackson Square in 1856 in his honor.
By the mid-1800s, New Orleans was one of the wealthiest cities in America. The wealth came predominately from sugar cane plantations, which depended on the labor of thousands of enslaved people. In the 1850s alone, Louisiana plantations produced an estimated 450 million pounds of sugar per year, worth more than $20 million annually. Sugar and cotton made its way downriver on steamboats where it was transferred to ocean-going ships for global markets. Thousands of dockworkers labored on the wharves of New Orleans to transfer the cargo to ships after unloading their imports, while hundreds of bankers, merchants, insurers, and lawyers managed finance and logistics. Millions were made in the commerce, and much of it went to the powerful aristocracy. That wealth may be seen to this day in the opulent townhouses of the French Quarter and the magnificent mansions of the Garden District. The elegance could not mask the fact that New Orleans’ wealth was earned on the backs of enslaved people. Between 1803 and 1861, New Orleans was home to the nation’s busiest slave market.
Mardi Gras was first recorded by French explorers in March 1699 when they observed a midwinter feast being celebrated as they camped at Point du Mardi Gras. After that, French colonists celebrated Mardi Gras in Mobile and, following its founding in 1718, in New Orleans mostly in the form of public festivity and private costumed balls. Mardi Gras remained an informal affair until 1857, when a group of Anglo-Americans from Mobile introduced formal parades and elaborate floats organized by social organizations called krewes. This would set the template for Mardi Gras for decades to come, by which time New Orleanians proudly called their pre-Lenten feast “the greatest free show on Earth.”
During the Civil War, Union troops captured Confederate New Orleans in May 1862 and occupied the region for the remainder of the war. In 1891, a New Orleans philanthropist named Frank T. Howard donated a building to store, display, and preserve Civil War items donated by Confederate veterans, particularly those from Louisiana. The Confederate Memorial Hall on Camp Street is the oldest museum in Louisiana and houses the world’s second-largest collection of Confederate artifacts. Most of the artifacts were donated by ancestors of Confederate soldiers and officers including flags, uniforms, weapons, and personal items like Jefferson Davis’s saddle and Bible. The Confederate Memorial Hall also served as a gathering place for Confederate veterans and site where former Confederate president Jefferson Davis laid in state when his remains were transferred from New Orleans where he died in 1889 to Richmond in 1893.
New Orleans played a critical role in the epic struggle of World War II. Local shipbuilder Andrew Higgins, who had designed special vessels to navigate shallow Louisiana bayous, realized that his design could deliver soldiers and materiel onto shallow beaches. Built in local shipyards by a racially integrated workforce of men and women, “Higgins Boats” were used on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day and throughout the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific. They were so successful that General Dwight D. Eisenhower would describe Higgins as “the man who won the war for us.” In 2000, the National D-Day Museum opened to celebrated New Orleans’ role in winning the war and that museum has grown into the world-class National World War II Museum that welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.
The National World War II Museum
The museum initially opened on June 6, 2000 as The National D-Day Museum. It was founded by historian and author Dr. Stephen Ambrose (author of Band of Brothers) to honor the role that the Higgins landing craft, built in New Orleans, had in securing an Allied victory. Initially, the museum only covered the Allied Invasion of Europe (D-Day) which took place on June 6, 1944. However, it was designated as the nation’s official WWII museum by Congress in 2004 and renamed The National World War II Museum. Since that designation, the museum has grown significantly into a seven-acre campus featuring over 250,000 artifacts, immersive 4D experiences, and personal oral histories housed in eight buildings. Today, The National World War II Museum is the #1 attraction in New Orleans and attracts visitors from around the world.
The Louisiana Memorial Pavilion was the original building in the museum and its lobby houses an exhibit on the Higgins landing craft to celebrate New Orlean’s role in winning the war. Hanging from the rafters is a C-47 which would have transported paratroopers on D-Day as well as a British Spitfire. Guests begin their journey back into WWII by being transported in a simulated passenger railcar just like many American servicemen began their war experience. The second floor is home to the Arsenal of Democracy gallery which covers the events leading up to America’s entry into WWII, war preparations, and American life during the war years. A lot of the gallery is dedicated to the enormous wartime manufacturing that President Roosevelt referred to as the “Arsenal of Democracy”. Unfortunately, the third floor D-Day Invasion of Normandy gallery was closed for a multi-year renovation during my April 2026 visit.
As you cross the pedestrian bridge from the Louisiana Memorial Pavilion to the Solomon Victory Theater Pavillion, guests pass through the U.S. Merchant Marine Gallery which chronicles the contributions and sacrifices of the merchant marine service during WWII. Over the course of the war, the U.S. Merchant Marine service transported approximately 74 billion pounds of war supplies using 3,600 cargo ships and 700 tankers. A total of 9,521 U.S. Merchant Mariners were killed during the war. The 250-seat Solomon Victory Theater is the largest theater at the museum. During my visit, they were presenting the immersive film Beyond All Boundaries which is produced and narrated by Tom Hanks. Using special effects and archival footage, the 48-minute multi-sensory film tells the story of America’s WWII experience from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day. Some of the special effect elements include falling snow, fog, a B-17 cockpit, and anti-aircraft guns which rise from the floor and drop from the ceiling.
The Campaigns of Courage Pavilion chronicles American servicemen’s actions in both the European and Pacific Theaters. On the first floor is the Road to Berlin gallery which chronicles the European Theater from the Battle of Kasserine Pass in February 1943 in North Africa to V-E Day on May 8, 1945. One of my favorite exhibits was on the Battle of the Bulge which is set in a snowy forest scene. Towards the end of the Road to Berlin gallery, you pass through exhibits set in an underground bunker (i.e. the Fuher bunker) and follow the American liberation of the concentration camps. The second floor is dedicated to the Pacific Theater with the Road to Tokyo gallery following American actions from the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 to V-J Day on August 15, 1945. As guests enter the gallery, they pass through the hanger deck of an aircraft carrier before passing into the jungle for an exhibit on the Battle of Guadalcanal. There are some fantastic exhibits and artifacts as guests island hop with American forces across the Pacific before reaching Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The Road to Tokyo gallery concludes with some artifacts from the atomic bombing of Japan and the surrender aboard the USS Missouri.
The Liberation Pavilion has galleries that explore the cost of WWII and how the war changed the world. The first floor Finding Hope in a World Destroyed gallery explores the sacrifices of the WWII generation with exhibits on the Holocaust, Anne Frank, and faith in wartime. There is a very interesting exhibit on the work of the Monument Men who hunted down art stolen by the Nazis and worked to return it to their rightful owners. The Forces of Freedom at Home and Abroad gallery examines rebuilding a world destroyed by war, the war crimes trials, and emergence of the United States as a superpower. The Freedom Theater on the third floor has a cinematic experience exploring what was at stake during WWII and the meaning of the Allied victory.
The US Freedom Pavilion features six restored World War II aircraft suspended from the ceiling in the George H.W. Bush Aviation Gallery. Long before he was president, US Navy lieutenant George H.W. Bush was a decorated pilot in the Pacific where he flew a General Motors TBM Avenger like the one displayed in the gallery. The centerpiece of the gallery is a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress named “My Gal Sal” that is suspended high over the floor of the gallery. The B-17 is escorted by a North American P-51D Mustang painted in Tuskegee Airmen colors, a naval Vought F4U-4 Corsair fighter, and a Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber. In addition, the gallery displays two medium bombers: a North American B-25J Mitchell which is suspended from ceiling and the fuselage of a Consolidated B-24 Liberator named “Over Exposed” that is displayed on the ground. The pavilion also houses an immersive submarine experience called Final Mission which chronicles the last moments of the most decorated US Navy submarine in WWII, the USS Tang.
The John E. Kushner Restoration Pavilion houses the museum’s fully restored patrol torpedo boat, PT-305. They have a viewing terrace which gives guests a birds-eye view of the boat’s deck and armaments. During my visit, I had the opportunity to speak to a few of the restoration staff who were telling me the history of this particular boat. Apparently following WWII, PT-305 was sold as surplus and used by a local as a commercial fishing boat. After the museum acquired the boat, it was kept on Lake Pontchartrain where it was used to give guests rides.
