The city now known as Gautier began in 1699, when a French expedition led by Pierre d'Iberville and accompanied by his younger brother, Jean-Baptiste Bienville, made landfall in Mobile, Alabama, explored the Mississippi gulf coast, and attempted to establish the first permanent French coastal colonial settlement there at the approximate location of what is now known as Le Maison Gautier, "The Old Place," before recognizing after a day's toil that the Pascagoula River was too shallow for their large draft ships and retiring to establish their colony at Ocean Springs. The first permanent settler in the area was Jean Baptiste Baudreau dit Graveline, who came with d'Iberville's second voyage in 1700 and returned in 1717 to establish a large cattle plantation. The entire rural area west of the Pascagoula River basin was known as West Pascagoula, and through the 18th and 19th centuries its population gradually expanded while the economy remained primarily agricultural. National ownership passed from France to Great Britain to Spain to the Republic of West Florida and finally to the United States in 1795. In 1865 Fernando Upton Gautier, a sawmill operator, moved from Tchoutacabouffa to West Pascagoula, built his home, subsequently called "The Old Place," on the western overlook of the river, and erected a lumber mill at the site where the railroad bridge now crosses the Pascagoula River, naming it F. Gautier & Sons. During post-Civil War Reconstruction and with the coming of the railroad in 1876, the mill became the largest industry in the area, complete with its own railroad stop. By common usage, most people began calling the community Gautier because of the prominent sign on the side of the railroad building, and by 1905 that name was in use on maps and by the U.S. Postal Service. Gautier became an incorporated city on July 1, 1986.