Old Mobile Site in Le Moyne, Alabama, was the location of La Mobile and Fort Louis de La Louisiane from 1702 to 1712, the first French settlement on the Mobile River and the capital of French Louisiana until 1711. Established under Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville as part of France’s effort to secure the Gulf Coast and Mississippi basin, it grew at Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff into a small planned colonial community centered on a square fort and gridded town. Dependent on difficult supply routes and marked by shortages, disease, trade, alliances, conflict, and enslaved labor, it became an early and fragile center of French power in North America.