WombatNation

This image has appeared in a lot of stories on Biloxi after Hurricane Katrina. The Golden Fisherman statue was originally located in downtown Biloxi in the mid 1970’s and was widely mocked at the time, perhaps because of the imagery of a fisherman casting a net into what was then a mostly run-down urban area. Sometime later, the statue was moved to the foot of the Biloxi - Ocean Springs bridge, in front of the Gulf Coast Maritime and Seafood Museum.

Since then, dowtown Biloxi has actually made a significant recovery. Of course, the hurricane has set the downtown back quite a few years, but I think it will recover from the damage.

I went to the Christmas in the City festival in the Vieux Marche mall while I was in Biloxi. A lot of artists and craftspeople had works for sale. Moran Art Studios was there with prints of a few of Joe Moran’s works. My mother and I talked to Mary Moran briefly. She said they are looking into reopening, at least temporarily, in a store in Ocean Springs. Their old spot has now been leveled twice by hurricanes, so they aren’t sure they want to rebuild again. I certainly hope things work out for them. Elizabeth Huffmaster also had some very nice prints and original watercolors.

Update 5/2/2007: I just found out from one of the commenters below that the statue was stolen last June, but then recovered. Here are some links to info about the theft.

• 16 Foot Golden Fisherman Statue Missing - WLOX
• Golden Fisherman Statue Stolen From Point Cadet Site - Gulf Coast News
• Reward climbs in Golden Fisherman case - City of Biloxi
• Biloxi’s Golden Fisherman Found In Mobile - WLOX
• Holloway: Golden Fisherman Will Be Part of City’s Future, in Some Form or Fashion - Gulf Coast News
• Damaged Statue Brought Back To Biloxi - WLOX
• Girls Find A Missing Piece Of Biloxi’s Golden Fisherman - WLOX

Point Cadet is one of the saddest sections to visit in Biloxi. At one point, we drove past three city blocks in which not a single building was left standing. This neighborhood with a deep, rich cultural heritage was once filled with many homes and businesses that survived Hurricane Camille. In the satellite photos after the hurricane, I saw block after block of piles of lumber and debris. Now that most of the debris has been hauled away, all that is left are a few concrete slabs and some scraggly oak trees. Many of the slabs were either washed away or were so badly damaged that they couldn’t be reused.

The oak trees look so strange and lonely standing on barren blocks of dirt and grass. The large lower limbs were snapped off by the water and the upper reaches and most of the small limbs, leaves, and Spanish moss were stripped away by the winds. The remaining, twisted limbs are covered with small sprouts and leaves. The block with these oak trees was formally filled with houses.

In this photo, you can see a badly damaged seafood processing plant off in the distance beyond the Palace casino, which is still listing into the water. At the closest edge of the casino barge, the first floor appears to be mostly or completely submerged.

Some of the destroyed casino barges have been broken down, but several remain. A bit down from the Point, the Grand casino still sits on top of the former Tullis-Toledano manor. The Tullis-Toledano manor is one of the many beautiful, historical buildings on the Coast that were destroyed during the hurricane.

I’ve finally processed all the photos from my trip to Biloxi earlier this month, so I’ll be uploading them with some background details over the next few days. The full set is already in my photo gallery. I don’t want to make it too easy for web spiders to grab all my photos, so you’ll need to edit the following URL to remove the spaces after the slashes in order to get to the images. “http:// wombatnation.com/ gallery/ katrina”

The Biloxi - Ocean Springs bridge is amazing to see up close. It’s as if a giant tip-toed across the bridge, crushing each section one after the other. These photos are from the Biloxi end of the bridge. In the first photo, you can see Deer Island in the background. Long ago, Deer Island was probably a contiguous island. I think it was separated into multiple parts, just like Ship Island was, during Hurricane Camille. Katrina broke it up even more. In the second photo, you can see more clearly how each section was not only broken loose from the other sections, but also pushed northward partially off of the supports.

I spent the last couple of days in Biloxi, Mississippi, visiting my mother and checking out the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Mary Mahoney’s Old French House restaurant is one of the few restaurants that has reopened in the downtown section of town close to the waterfront. Last Saturday night my mother and I ate an excellent meal there. I had the grilled shrimp with lump crabmeat on angel hair pasta and she had the whole grilled flounder.

In this photo you can see how much higher the water reached inside the restaurant during Katrina than in Camille. The line that you can just barely see at the top of the image is the level to which water rose inside Mahoney’s during Katrina. Based on those lines, I would estimate that the water was about five feet deeper inside the restaurant (actually, the bar) during Katrina.