Basics

• State: Louisiana
• Incorporation date: 1805
• Area: 349.85 square miles
• Statehood: April 1812
• Population*: 383,997
• Type of government: Mayor-council
• Planning department website: City Planning
• Comprehensive plan: New Orleans Master Plan

*Current as of 2020 Census. 

Indigenous occupants

Prior to European colonization, the area was inhabited by Native American groups including those now known as the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, and the Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe of Louisiana — the four groups that are federally recognized in the state today.

The Natchez practiced agriculture and trade near the area now known as Sicily Island. The Chitimacha were skilled canoe-makers and subsisted on fishing, while the Caddo also practiced farming and engaged in trade with other groups. Local groups developed far-reaching trade networks along the Mississippi River and beyond, trading for objects from thousands of miles away.

Today, roughly 2,700 New Orleans residents identify as Native American. The Chitimacha are the only Louisiana tribe that still live on a portion of their ancestral lands, 900 acres roughly four hours from New Orleans.

In a unique local tradition that dates to the 19th century, during the city’s annual Carnival celebrations, Black New Orleans residents known as ‘Mardi Gras Indians’ dress in costumes that utilize Native American motifs. While the exact origins of the custom are murky, one theory states that the tradition is an homage to Native tribes who aided Black Americans fleeing slavery. Due to the exagerrated motifs used in some of the costuming, there is some concern over the level of cultural appropriation that these dancers engage in. Whatever its roots, the custom is a unique expression of the area’s ethnic diversity and the rich, intertwined history of the many people who have made the region home.

Colonization

While European colonization was relatively slow to take hold, once it began in earnest by the mid-1500s, it began to irreparably alter life for local indigenous people. Spanish explorers first probed the area in 1519, but moved on without further exploration. Ten years later, a failed Florida expedition led by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca washed ashore near Galveston Island in East Texas and later encountered some Louisiana natives. More Spanish and French explorers began exploiting the area, with indigenous groups often caught in the crossfire of conflicts between European powers. Meanwhile, previously unknown diseases like smallpox decimated the local population. By 1700, both Spain and France had established footholds in Louisiana, disrupting established communities and changing the physical and social landscape. In 1712, the city was founded as La Nouvelle Orleans as part of the French Louisiana colony.

At Thomas Jefferson’s behest, the United States bought the Louisiana Purchase from the French for $15 million in 1801, bringing 828,000 square miles into American territory and doubling the size of the young country as part of Jefferson’s goal to expand the nation across the entire continent. The resulting flood of white settlers further pushed out Native Americans and disrupted traditional communities, claiming land without regard to its prior occupants.

‘Treaties’ with the United States continued to erode property rights for Native Americans, pushing them into smaller and smaller areas far from their native lands. In 1830, the Indian Removal Act authorized the forcible and brutal relocation of all Native people living east of the Mississippi River, culminating in what is known as the Trail of Tears.

During the antebellum period, the city thrived thanks largely to slave labor and cotton, as well as its position as a hub for commerce and the Atlantic slave trade. New Orleans was simultaneously home to a large and prosperous community of free people of color — roughly 13,000 in 1860.

20th century growth

In the late 19th and early 20th century, New Orleans politics was largely led by ‘Dixiecrats,’ Southern Democrats opposed to Reconstruction who passed Jim Crow laws aimed at perpetuating segregation and limiting the rights of Black residents. The Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld “separate but equal” facilities, stemmed from the actions of a New Orleans activist. Homer Plessy, who was classified as being one-eighth of African descent and part of the Comité des Citoyens, a group of politically active free persons of color, purposely boarded a whites-only train car to challenge Louisiana’s Separate Car Act. After his arrest, the case was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896.

The growth of railroads and highways reduced the importance of river-based freight, and economic growth in New Orleans slowed. From its peak as the third largest U.S. city in 1860, New Orleans was outpaced by cities like Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta.

In the 1960s, the city was a major hub of the Civil Rights movement. In 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first Black student to attend an all-white school in the wake of the Supreme Court’s desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, becoming an icon of the movement.

For much of the city’s history, development took place on higher ground along natural river levees and bayous, but at the turn of the 20th century city leaders devised a plan to drain the marshland surrounding New Orleans that limited its geographic growth via a pump system developed by A. Baldwin Wood. Since then, land in some neighborhoods has subsided, making them more prone to flooding and hurricane-induced storm surges.

New Orleans continues to thrive as a tourist destination and historic gem. While it remains one of the world’s largest ports, by the 1990s, the New Orleans economy relied heavily on tourism, which accounts for roughly 40 percent of the city’s revenue. It remains a wildly popular destination for revelers during Mardi Gras festivities and all year round. But the city’s commercial success has not translated into a windfall for all residents, and residential segregation, educational inequity, and poverty continue to pose challenges for many residents.

21st century concerns

As a low-lying city at the mouth of the Mississippi River delta, New Orleans must urgently address its most pressing issue: flooding and damage from increasingly powerful hurricanes. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, breaching local levees, displacing millions of residents, and bringing into stark focus the economic and racial disparities existing in the city. Federal relief efforts were deemed largely inadequate, and the storm portended a rise in bigger, more dangerous hurricanes in the Gulf Coast.

The city’s historic architecture and centuries-old infrastructure pose their own challenges for mobility, safety, and accessibility. The older buildings, high curbs, and stone-paved sidewalks in the historic French Quarter district can make access difficult, while other parts of the city were developed without effective pedestrian infrastructure at all. In 2024, the city undertook an effort to improve accessibility in advance of hosting the 2025 Super Bowl.

Key planning milestones

• 1718: New Orleans is founded as La Nouvelle Orleans under France.
• 1722: After a hurricane destroys much of the new city, paving the way for engineer Adrien de Pauger’s gridded French Quarter plan.
• 1762: The French cede the region to Spain.
• 1805: New Orleans is incorporated. The first city charter, known as the Conseil de Ville, is granted by the territorial legislature.
• 1812: Louisiana is admitted to the Union as the 18th U.S. state.
• 1896: Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision uphold’s Louisiana’s segregation law and paving the way for unabashed Jim Crow policies across the South.
• 1913: The city begins installing a pump system to drain surrounding swamp and create more usable land for the city’s development. 
• 1954: The Home Rule Charter reinstates a Mayor-Council form of government.
• 1960: Brown v. Board of Education mandates school desegregation, leading to Ruby Bridges’ iconic entrance into William Frantz Public Elementary School as its first Black student and causing protests across the segregated South.
• 1978: The city elects its first Black mayor, Ernest Morial.
• 2005: The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina and the failures of the federal government in the aftermath thrusts New Orleans into the national spotlight and prompts a mass exodus of residents, many of whom resettled permanently outside the city.