Most people associate Mardi Gras in the US with the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. It is true that New Orleans hosts the largest and most popular Mardi Gras to some , but they were not the first to celebrate the Carnival season. That honor goes to their smaller neighbor to the east: Mobile, Alabama. Mobile hosted its first Mardi Gras celebration in 1703, long before New Orleans. And Mardi Gras is still celebrated in this quiet southern town every year. While New Orleans has the reputation for the largest and trashiest Mardi Gras, Mobile prides itself on having a "classy" Mardi Gras celebration. Welcome to Mobile, Alabama, the birthplace of Mardi Gras!

* 1703- Mardi Gras observed for the first time in the New World by French pioneers at Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff, the first settlement of Mobile.
* 1711- Carnival is born in present site as residents join in song, food and dance. Papiér-maché bull, in honor of Boeuf Gras (another name for Mardi Gras), is pulled down Dauphin Street in what is believed to have been the first carnival “parade? in North America .
* 1830- Michael Kraft wakes up the mayor on New Year’s Ever with rakes and hoes and cowbells, forming the Cowbellian de Rakin Society: the first masked parading society in America.
* 1840- Cowbellians introduce horse-drawn floats in a parade entitled, “Heathen Gods and Goddesses.?
* 1843- Striker’s Independent Society formed. Paraded for over fifty years. The oldest remaining mystic society in America.
* 1862/1865- Carnival is cancelled during the War of Northern Agression.
* 1866- Joe Cain revives Mardi Gras after the War by costuming as undefeated Chief of the Chickasaw Indians, “Old Slacabamorinico?, and leading the Lost Cause Minstrels in a procession through the City in defiance of occupying Union troops.
* 1867- Oldest continuous parading society founded: Order of Myths.
* 1868- First Order of Myths Parade on Mardi Gras night.
* 1868- Infant Mystics become second society to parade on Mardi Gras night and later moved to Lundi Gras (Fat Monday).
* 1872- First Royal Court is reigned over by Daniel E. Huger, first king of Carnival, styled as Emperor Felix I. The Mobile Carnival Association is organized.
-------- This information was provided by the mobile mardi gras museum---------
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