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Find the best places to watch the
New Orleans 4th July fireworks live
here.
The The Big
Easy sizzles in the summer, but the city
really pops on the Fourth of July -- a New
Orleans holiday that packs the French Quarter
with even more food, music and fun. Grab
a seat along the banks of the Mississippi
River for ringside views of the "Dueling
Barges," a fireworks bonanza launched
from two riverboats as part of the Crescent
City's Go 4th on the River celebration.
The fireworks display starts around 9 p.m.,
and is choreographed with a simulcast tribute
to patriotic classics.
La Nouvelle-Orléans
(New Orleans) was founded May 7, 1718, by
the French Mississippi Company, under the
direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville,
on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It
was named for Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of
Orléans, who was Regent of France at the
time. His title came from the French city
of Orléans. The French colony was ceded
to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris
(1763). During the American Revolutionary
War, New Orleans was an important port to
smuggle aid to the rebels, transporting
military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi
River. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count
of Gálvez launched the southern campaign
against the British from the city in 1779.[14]
New Orleans remained under Spanish control
until 1801, when it reverted to French control.
Nearly all of the surviving 18th century
architecture of the Vieux Carré (French
Quarter) dates from this Spanish period.
(The most notable exception being the Old
Ursuline Convent.) Napoleon sold the territory
to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase
in 1803. Thereafter, the city grew rapidly
with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles,
Irish, Germans and Africans. Major commodity
crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated
with slave labor on large plantations outside
the city.
New Orleans
reached its most consequential position
as an economic and population center in
relation to other American cities in the
decades prior to 1860; as late as that year
it was the nation's fifth-largest city and
by far the largest in the American South.[26]
Though New Orleans continued to grow in
size, from the mid-19th century onwards,
first the emerging industrial and railroad
hubs of the Midwest overtook the city in
population, then the rapidly growing metropolises
of the Pacific Coast in the decades before
and after the turn of the 20th century,
then other Sun Belt cities in the South
and West in the post–World War II period
surpassed New Orleans in population.[26]
Consequently, New Orleans has periodically
mounted attempts to regain its economic
vigor and pre-eminence over the past 150
years, with varying degrees of success.
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