Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Biloxi, MS

Biloxi is a city in Harrison County, Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast, and it shares the county seat with the neighboring city of Gulfport to its west.

The 2020 census counted 49,449 people in Biloxi, making it the fourth-most populous city in Mississippi, with 20,052 households.

Biloxi was incorporated in 1838, and its name comes from the Bilocci, the French rendering of the name of the local Native American people.

The area's first European settlement was French: colonists founded Fort Maurepas in 1699 at what is now Ocean Springs, and the present-day city site was settled around Fort Louis in 1720, when it briefly served as the capital of French Louisiana.

Biloxi's beachfront lies directly on the Mississippi Sound, with barrier islands offshore, and the Biloxi Lighthouse, completed in May 1848, is one of only two surviving lighthouses on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Keesler Air Force Base lies within the city and is home to the 81st Training Wing and the 403rd Wing of the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

Biloxi became a seafood-processing center after the first cannery opened in 1881, and the tradition of blessing the fishing fleet began there in 1929 and continues each year before shrimp season.

In 1959 Biloxi was the site of the Biloxi Wade-Ins, when Black physician Gilbert R. Mason and friends swam at the whites-only beach in protest, a campaign that led to the desegregation of the city's beaches.

With legal gambling in Mississippi in the 1990s, Biloxi became a resort casino center, home to eight casinos including the Beau Rivage, the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, and the Golden Nugget Biloxi.

Biloxi was devastated by Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005, when a 30-foot storm surge struck the coast, and a memorial to Katrina victims now stands in the city.