In 1699, French explorer Pierre Le Moyne D’Iberville built a small palisaded settlement, Fort Maurepas, on the east side of Biloxi Bay, but in 1720 this was abandoned for “New Biloxi” on the west side. Much later, the hospitable climate and artesian springs bubbling up inland stimulated a tourism economy, and architect Louis Sullivan was among the first Chicagoans to establish winter residences here in the late 1880s. In the early twentieth century, the Anderson family, including painter Walter Anderson, developed Shearwater Pottery near the Mississippi Sound.
Today, Ocean Springs is a leafy enclave, with a compact downtown stretching along Washington Avenue south of the former Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad Depot (1907; 1000 Washington) and east along Porter Avenue. The two-lane beach road typically runs behind the waterfront estates, and where it does try to hug the shore, it is frequently forced inland by bayous and creeks.
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