Pascagoula, Mississippi, United States

🇺🇸 Pascagoula is a city in Jackson County, Mississippi, United States. It is the principal city of the Pascagoula Metropolitan Statistical Area, and is part of the Gulfport–Biloxi–Pascagoula Combined Statistical Area. It is the county seat of Jackson County.

The city is served by three airports: Mobile Regional Airport, 34 miles (55 km) to the north-east in Alabama; Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport, about 40 miles (64 km) west of Pascagoula; and the Trent Lott International Airport, 9 miles (14 km) to the north in Jackson County.

Early history The name Pascagoula, which means "bread eater", is taken from the Pascagoula, a group of Native Americans found in villages along the Pascagoula River some distance above its mouth. Hernando de Soto seems to have made the first contact with them in the 1540s, though little is known of that encounter. Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, founder of the colony of Louisiana, left a more detailed account from an expedition of this region in 1700. The first detailed account comes from Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, younger brother of Iberville, whom the Pascagoula visited at Fort Maurepas in present-day Ocean Springs, shortly after it was settled and while the older brother was away in France. There are few details that are certain about these people, except that their language seemed not to have shared an etymological root with the larger native groups to the north, the Choctaw particularly (who speak a Muskogean language). There has been speculation that their language may be related to Biloxi. (The Biloxi people spoke a now extinct Siouan language, which is related to the languages spoken by the Sioux, Crow, and Ho-Chunk.) The territory of the Biloxi people seems to have ranged from the areas of what are now called Biloxi Bay to Bayou La Batre (Alabama) and 25 miles (40 km) up the Pascagoula River, and the Pascagoula people's territory seems to have ranged between some distance north of there to the confluence of the Leaf and Chickasawhay rivers.: 19–21  However, the Pascagoula language is completely undocumented – thus, genealogical affiliations from other authors are speculation.

The first European settlers of Pascagoula were Jean Baptiste Baudreau Dit Graveline, Joseph Simon De La Pointe and his aunt, Madame Chaumont.

Modern history The region changed hands over the next century, being occupied variously by the English, French, and Spanish until well after the American Revolutionary War. It did not come into the permanent possession of the United States until 1812 when it was added to the Mississippi Territory. At one point, for 74 days in 1810, Pascagoula was a part of what was known as the Republic of West Florida.: 47–49  Pascagoula was incorporated as a village in 1892 and obtained city status in 1901. Today's downtown Pascagoula used to be the town of Scranton, Mississippi (incorporated in 1870) until the two towns merged in 1912.

In October 1973, an alleged unidentified flying object sighting and alien abduction is said to have occurred when co-workers Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claimed they were abducted by aliens while fishing near Pascagoula. The incident, Pascagoula Abduction, earned substantial mass media attention. In June 2019, Pascagoula placed an historical marker near the alleged abduction site.

Points of interest The United States post office in Pascagoula contains a mural, Legend of the Singing River, painted in 1939 by Lorin Thompson. Murals were produced from 1934 to 1943 in the United States through the Section of Painting and Sculpture, later called the Section of Fine Arts, of the Treasury Department. The mural was restored in the 1960s as the building became the Pascagoula Public Library. The building was damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the mural was placed in storage. In 2010, it was re-installed at the new Pascagoula post office on Jackson Avenue.

Pascagoula is the home of the Old Spanish Fort, the oldest building in the Mississippi Valley. It was built sometime in the 1750s.

Geography Pascagoula is located along Mississippi Sound, on the east side of the mouth of the Pascagoula River. It is bordered to the north by Moss Point and to the west, across the Pascagoula River, by Gautier. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 24.5 square miles (63.4 km²), of which 15.4 square miles (39.8 km²) are land and 9.1 square miles (23.6 km²), or 37.25%, are water. U.S. Route 90 (Denny Avenue) passes through the city, leading north-east 16 miles (26 km) to Grand Bay, Alabama, and west 21 miles (34 km) to Biloxi. Mississippi Highway 613 (Telephone Road) leads north from US-90 into Moss Point and 5 miles (8 km) to Interstate 10.

Economy Pascagoula is a major industrial city of Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast. Prior to World War II, the town was a sleepy fishing village of about 5,000. The population skyrocketed with the war-driven shipbuilding industry. Although the city's population seemed to peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s as Cold War defense spending was at its height, Pascagoula experienced some new growth and development in the years before Hurricane Katrina. Today, Pascagoula is home to the state's largest private, single-site employer, Ingalls Shipbuilding, owned by Huntington Ingalls Industries. Other major industries include the largest Chevron refinery in the world; Rolls-Royce Naval Marine specialising in U.S. Navy ship propulsion; and First Chemical/Chemours.

Naval Station Pascagoula was located on Singing River Island and was homeport to several Navy warships, as well as a large Coast Guard contingent. However, Naval Station Pascagoula was decommissioned as part of the 2005 BRAC recommendations and ceased operations in 2006.