A fact from La Balize, Louisiana appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 17 May 2008, and was viewed approximately 1,613 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that the town of La Balize, Louisiana, at the mouth of the Mississippi River, was rebuilt several times because of hurricanes before it was destroyed and abandoned around 1860?
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This article originally contended that La Balize was built in 1699 and was the first French fort on the lower Mississippi River. Those claims cited David Roth's "Louisiana Hurricane History" as evidence. Unfortunately, Roth doesn't cite his own sources, so it's very difficult to verify those claims. Meanwhile, the historical record directly contradicts them. Pierre le Moyne D'Iberville, the founder of French Louisiana, notes in his journal on February 1st, 1700 that "we had no posts closer than 30 leagues from the river."[1] Moreover, as he was writing, he was setting out to establish the true first French fort on the lower river—Fort Mississippi (later called Fort La Boulaye)—located much further upriver of La Balize near present-day Phoenix. Note that there are already several pages on the web that now erroneously claim the establishment of La Balize in 1699 due to the previous version of this article.
