Biloxi’s long peninsula had been seasonally occupied by the Biloxi people for centuries before the French arrived in 1699. Incorporated in 1838, the town, its population then still heavily French, began to attract New Orleanians to its beachfront inns. Many built summer houses here, and the 1850s witnessed the construction of some of Biloxi’s finest beachfront estates. The completion of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in 1871 provided connections and marked the beginning of Biloxi’s industrial seafood operations, with five plants canning oysters and shrimp by 1886. The seafood industry attracted immigrants who concentrated near Point Cadet at the peninsula’s eastern end. Three waves of immigration brought Central Europeans (primarily Slavs and Croats) in the 1890s, Cajuns from Louisiana in the 1920s, and Vietnamese in the 1970s. The Chua Van Duc Buddhist Temple (2002; 179 Oak Street), the neighboring Vietnamese Martyrs Catholic Church (2000; 171 Oak), and the popular Vietnamese French cafe, Le Bakery (280 Oak), anchor the Vietnamese community on the Point.
Biloxi’s status as the Mississippi Coast’s principal summer destination was attained by 1900, and by the 1920s, palatial hotels dotted the beachfront, with many offering illegal gambling until stricter law enforcement in the 1950s sent the activity underground. Gambling returned in 1990 when Mississippi’s legislature, at the behest of Coast legislators, legalized dockside gambling in Gulf Coast and Mississippi River counties. The Coast’s first casino, the Isle of Capri, appeared on Point Cadet in 1992. Initially, lawmakers required that gambling floors be built over water, but after Hurricane Katrina, casinos could be land based. Today, they undergird Biloxi’s economy, and eight of them, typically with attached high-rise hotels, ring the peninsula.
Biloxi became a leader in Mississippi’s preservation movement beginning with the 1976 publication of Buildings of Biloxi. Sadly, many of Biloxi’s historic buildings were destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, including the Greek Revival Tullis-Toledano house (c. 1856), which was crushed by the massive Grand Casino barge when the storm surge pushed it inland.
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