New Orleans is a major city on the northern coast of the Gulf of New Spain, and on the Mississippi River. It was founded May 7, 1718, by the French Mississippi Company. The city remained a French colony until 1763, when it was ceded to Spain in the Treaty of Paris. It reverted to French control in 1801, and Napoleon sold it and the rest of the Louisiana Territory to the United States of America in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. The city experianced a population boom due to immigration under American control.