Before the casinos, before Camille, the Mississippi Gulf Coast was the resort coast — a string of grand hotels, beachfront estates, and summer colonies that drew presidents, plantation owners, and New Orleans families escaping yellow fever season. The Biloxi Hotel, built in 1848, was one of the first resort hotels in the South. The White House of the Confederacy in Biloxi — Beauvoir — was Jefferson Davis's retirement home, but it sat in a neighborhood of summer mansions, not in isolation. Pass Christian's Scenic Drive was lined with the summer houses of wealthy New Orleanians. Woodrow Wilson vacationed on the coast. So did Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman. The Louisville & Nashville Railroad connected the coast to the rest of the South, and the beachfront highway — now Highway 90 — was the promenade. Camille destroyed most of the grand architecture in 1969. Katrina finished the job. What you see now is the third iteration of a resort coast that has been built, leveled, and rebuilt since before the Civil War.
