Demographics
Government
Communities
Geography

Mobile County Demographics 

• As of 2003 Mobile County’s population was 399,747.  
• The county seat is Mobile.
• The racial makeup of Mobile county is 63% White, 33% Black, 0.67% Native American, 1.41% Asian
• The median income for a household in the county was $33,710, and the median income for a family was $40,378. The per capita income was $17,178.  18% of the population is below the poverty line

Mobile County Government

• Mobile County Website
• Mobile County Organizational Chart
• There are 3 county commission districts and seats.
  • District 1: Merceria Ludgood was elected Oct. 2007.
  • District 2: Vacant.  Empty after resignation of Stephen Nodine. To be filled July 2010.
  • District 3: Mike Dean is a former two-term state legislator and Mobile native. He was elected in 2000.
• The county charges each property owner a 6½-mill property tax for money spent on specific Pay-As-You-Go projects approved by voters. Before 2004, all the money was spent on road or bridge work, but residents have since voted to let the money be used for incentives and buildings, as well. The fund brings in about $22 million a year.
• The Mobile County Commission and voters have approved an $83.5 million contribution to the Thyssen-Krupp incentives package.
  • Up to $156.9 million will come from the county’s Pay-As-You-Go fund, and will be spent over 30 years to pay $70 million in bonds that will be sold to pay the county’s incentives which will be about $5 million a year. As part of the deal, the state will spend about $75 million to widen and expand Schillinger Road and to make improvements to U.S. 43.
  • The county must file a validation lawsuit so investors can be sure there are no legal issues surrounding the vote. County officials will then get insurance and a bond rating and should be able to sell the bonds by the end of the year
  • A consortium of other area city and county governments has met to consider sharing a portion of that amount — estimates range from $13.5 million to $20 million, but none of those governments have formally agreed to any payments.  Stephen Nodine said he plans to ask University of South Alabama economics professor Semoon Chang to study the property tax revenue impact to counties and cities in the area
  • Of its $83.5 million, the county will get back about $45 million through the state transportation department paying to widen and expand Schillinger Road.
• Mobile County Sheriff’s Office
  • The Mobile County Sheriff is Sam Cochran
  • 2006 Mobile County Sheriff’s Office Calls Hotspots
• Mobile County Public Works
• South Alabama Regional Planning Commission
  • SARPC Video
• The Mobile Metropolitan Planning Organization conducts the Mobile Area Transportation Planning Process.
  • The MPO includes the cities of Creola, Satsuma, Saraland, Chickasaw, Prichard, Mobile and Bayou La Batre, the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT), Wave Transit System, South Alabama Regional Planning Commission (SARPC), and Mobile County.
  • The Governor designates a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) in each urban area having a population of at least 50,000 people or greater (as per the Federal Highway Act of 1962).
  • Mobile County Traffic Counts 

Mobile County Communities and Municipalities

• An 1861 map has towns labeled for Mobile, Toulminville, Whistler, Kushla, Belle Air (along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad), and on the eastern shore, Stockton, Alabama City, and Williamsburg.
• Current Municipalities are: Mobile, Bayou La Batre, Chickasaw, Citronelle, Creola, Dauphin Island, Mount Vernon, Prichard, Saraland, Satsuma, Theodore

Northeast Mobile County

Northwest Mobile County

West Mobile County

South Mobile County

Northeast Mobile County

• Towns developed along the Mobile & Birmingham Railroad (later Southern Railroad then Louisville & Nashville RR).
• U.S. Highway 43 was later built along this route.
• In the 1940s, as Mobile expanded because of war-relate shipbuilding, Prichard, Chickasaw, and Saraland grew.
• Beginning in the 1950s, chemical and other industrial plants were built between US 43 and the Mobile River. US 43 became known as “chemical alley”.
  • Enviromental concerns about the US 43 plants have grown since the 1980s.
  • Towns on US 45 (north to south): Calvert, Mount Vernon, Movico, Chastang, Bucks, Salco, LeMoyne, Axis, Creola, Satsuma, Saraland, Chickasaw, Prichard

 Mount Vernon

• Population 829 (2003)
• Ellicott’s Stone is a boundary marker placed in 1799 by a joint U.S.-Spanish survey party. It marked 31° North latitude: the east-west line between the U.S. Mississippi Territory and Spanish West Florida (as set forth in the 1795 Pinckney Treaty — more formally called the Treaty of San Lorenzo). The stone marker (a sandstone block about two feet high and eight inches thick) was placed near the bank of the Mobile River in North Mobile County. On the U.S. (north) side of the stone is an inscription stating “U.S. Lat. 31, 1799.” The inscription on the south side reads “Dominio de S.M. Carlos IV, Lat. 31, 1799.”
• In 1799 the United States created Fort Stoddert on a bluff of the upper Mobile River, near Mount Vernon.
  • Fort Stoddert was a humble wooden structure, but for a time could accurately claim to be the southernmost port of the United States.
  • In 1807, Aaron Burr was captured in Washington County and brought to Fort Stoddert. The former vice president had been a fugitive, having killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel and fled South. After brief incarceration at Fort Stoddert, Burr was sent back east, where he was acquitted on treason charges.
  • Some Choctaws remained near Mount Vernon rather than moving to Western reservations.
• In 1830, President Andrew Jackson established the federal Mount Vernon Arsenal three miles west of old Fort Stoddert.
  • The Arsenal was appropriated by Confederacy in 1861 and its equipment moved to Selma facilities. After Civil War it was used as U. S. Army barracks
  • 1887-1894 The Arsenal held about 450 Apache prisoners of war, including Geronimo. Rather loosely incarcerated, he served as internal justice of the peace for the prisoners, and supposedly would greet local trains, selling the passengers autographed trinkets. The Apaches were allowed to bury their own dead, and did so secretly, with Delta riverbanks the rumored location.
  • Among the post surgeons at Mount Vernon was Walter Reed, who would discover the cause of yellow fever. Josiah Gorgas, later Chief of Ordnance of Confederacy, was stationed here in the 1850’s
  • The Arsenal was deeded to the State of Alabama in 1895 and became Searcy Hospital.
• Searcy Hospital:
  • Mt. Vernon Hospital was established in 1900 by the State of Alabama. It served as mental hospital for Black citizens.
  • Its name was changed in 1919 to Searcy Hospital, honoring its first superintendent, Dr. J. T. Searcy.
  • Treatment for all citizens began in 1969.
  • Nine of structures dating from the 1830’s are still in use, including the Superintendent’s House, Tower Building, and Library. Enclosing wall dates from the 1830’s.
  • Physician E.L. McCafferty did important research at Searcy into the dietary disorder pellagra. George Washington Carver sent him peanut oil as a possible treatment.

Chastang

• The Chastang settlement near Chastang’s Bluff is represented by the large and interesting colored Creole colony who live in the vicinity. They claim descent from Dr. John Chastang of Spanish times but really go back to the French period, of which their patois is an interesting reminder.
• The group of north Mobile and south Washington county citizens known as “Cajans” are now organized as the MOWA Choctaw Indian tribe.

LeMoyne

Axis

• The Kirk House & Garden was built in 1914

Creola

Satsuma

• Population 5,872 (2003)
• Philip Satsuma of Osaka, Japan is credited with developing the first “Satsuma” in 1832. He grafted a branch of a tangerine tree to a mandarin orange tree and used cuttings from a kumquat plant. The first Satsuma arrived in Alabama in 1878.
• Satsumas once grew in abundance in the area once known as “Fig Tree Island,” on the Pace Orange Orchard. In 1910 Pace Orange Orchard had about 100 acres of pecans and satsuma trees on the area
• The Satsuma Orange Groves and Pecan Company in the early 1900’s distributed the fruit in a town that took the name “Satsuma” in 1915.
• In 1922 a packing house built that still stands above Mac’s Landing
• Between 1912 and1924 the satsuma trees damaged by cold weather & citrus canker
• In 1959 Satsuma was incorporated
• City of Satsuma Website

Saraland

• City of Saraland Website
• Population: 12,288.
• From the time of the French settlement at Mobile in early 1700s until Alabama was made a state in 1819, all of the Bayou Sara area was known as the territory of Mobile, as being distinct from a city of Mobile. There have been settlers along bayous and creeks in what is now Saraland since the 1700s.
• Don Diego Alvarez acquired Saraland through a Spanish land grant; the land was given the name Alvarez Station by his descendants.
• In 1800 many families homesteaded the area, one of which was the Cleveland family who named the area Cleveland Station. Some of the other pioneer families were Rice, Hartley, Moore, LaCoste, Williams, and Tool.
• Its present day name later came from Clark J. DeWitt, a retired minister editor who opened the first post office in 1895 and renamed the city after his beloved wife, Sara.
• Until the mid 1880’s, Bayou Sara was known as Saw Mill Creek, from its junction with Gunnison Creek to Twelve Mile Island.
• Apart from the occasional fish camp, timber, and turpentine extraction, a small scale ship building operation, and numerous grist mills and saw mills, there was very little industry in the Bayou Sara area until well into the 20th century.
• Saraland was a sparsely populated city until the industrial boom, which caused the northward expansion of Mobile. This expansion brought about Saraland’s incorporation with Mobile in 1957. At that time Saraland had only 125 residents.
• Royal Dutch Shell operates the Shell Saraland Refinery, which was built in 1975
• In 2006, Saraland voted to break away from MCPSS and form its own city school system. Saraland officials expect to have the new school system in operation by 2009
• Grand Oak Wildlife Preservation Park: 300 Industrial Pkwy. The nature trails of this environmental project are dedicated to preserving domestic and exotic wildlife.
• Saraland Historical Museum.

Chickasaw

• City of Chickasaw Website
• Population 6,099 (2003)
• Native Americans referred to the creek running through the area as Chickasha Bogue
• In 1733, a large tract of land containing what is now Chickasaw was deeded by Bienville to his friend D’Arraguette. Complete records of all early changes in ownership are not readily available, but the names of Lorending (Laurendine), Chastang and Alvarez are among those mentioned.
• Early in the century, a sizeable development grew in what is now Whistler, centered around railroad shops.
• In 1910, the Thompson brothers subdivided North Mobile, but there was very little development.
• In the Chickasaw area there were farms and a mill which processed coconuts into oil and soap
• As World War I loomed, the Tennessee Coal and Iron Co., a division of U.S.Steel out of Birmingham, quietly purchased a large area which included what is now Chickasaw. Three corporations – Chickasaw Shipbuilding and Car Co., Chickcasaw Utilities Co., and Chickasaw Land Co., were formed with specific duties. By a tremendous effort, the cypress swamp adjacent to the creek was drained, with dikes built and huge pumps installed.
• In 1917 U.S. Steel announced it would build Chickasaw shipyard, supplied with prefabricated steel from the Fairfield plant of Tennessee Coal and Iron Co., and expected to cost $30,000,000. Federal Shipbuilding developed this shipyard for the war effort with $20m from the Navy. By the time operations at Chickasaw Shipbuilding and Car Co. were well under way, the Armistice was declared, but 14 ships were built and launched before it was closed. The shipyard was closed and liquidated after the war.
• The cypress swamp adjacent to the stream (Chickasaw Bogue or Chickasaw Creek) was drained, dikes were constructed, and drainage pumps were installed. Chickasaw was built as a planned community with attractive and well-built homes for the shipyard workers. The company held title to all the land in the town and provided municipal services, such as sewerage service and police protection, to the residents of the town. A deputy of the Mobile County Sheriff, paid by the company, served as the town’s policeman. Merchants rented the stores on the business block. Many people in the United States lived in company-owned towns during the 20th Century. In the bituminous coal industry alone, approximately one-half of the miners in the United States lived in company-owned houses in the period from 1922-23. The percentage varied from 9 per cent in Illinois and Indiana and 64 per cent in Kentucky, to almost 80 per cent in West Virginia.
• In 1939, the Village and shipyard were acquired by a Mobile businessman, Ben May, who sold it in 1940 to Gulf Shipbuilding Corp., a subsidiary of Waterman Steamship Corp. The shipbuilding area was renovated, the homes repaired and modernized, and streets paved. The shipyard produced Destroyers, 180′ and 220′ Minesweepers, and C_2_S_EL Cargo ships.
• With production activity at its peak, Gulf Shipbuilding employed between 10,000 and 15,000 workers. This population boom required the introduction of eligibility requirements for living in company-owned properties. Only persons with connection to the shipyard could rent houses from the company while many previous occupants were forced to vacate. To further accommodate the demand for housing, the federal government constructed the Gulf Homes housing project, other temporary housing structures, and Navy barracks.
• Grace Marsh was the plaintiff in a U.S. Supreme Court case called Marsh v. Alabama (1946). Marsh, a Jehovah’s Witness, undertook to distribute religious literature on a sidewalk near the post office in Chickasaw, and was arrested on a trespassing charge. She was subsequently convicted of the crime of trespassing, and the Alabama courts upheld the conviction on appeal. This U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that Alabama could not permit a corporation to assume the functions of a municipal government and at the same time deny First Amendment rights through the application of the State’s criminal trespass law.
• Early in 1946, the entire village was purchased by Leedy Investment Co. for one million dollars. The houses were sold to individuals, with current occupants given first choice. The city of Chickasaw was incorporated in 1946.
• In 1979, Halter Marine reactivated the shipbuilding facility to provide service vessels and tugboats to the booming offshore industry. The resurgence was short-lived and the facility was closed again in 1983. The former shipyard now serves as a small general cargo facility
• The Chickasaw Shipyard Village Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
• Chickasaw Civic Theatre
• Sources: Wikipedia, National Park Service, City of Chickasaw,

Prichard

• Population 27,983 (2003).
• Prichard began as a settlement in the 1830s bordering the Telegraph Road (U.S Highway 43). The Mobile & Ohio Railroad reached the area in 1848.
• East Prichard remained largely unsettled until 1860 when the Clotilde landed in Mobile Bay. Africatown evolved into a greater part of the Plateau/Magazine area which developed along Telegraph Road, and eventually, Plateau and Magazine had their territory split between Mobile and Prichard.
• In 1879, Cleveland Prichard (1840-1899) founded the municipality and was postmaster. According to “75 years of Prichard,” by Julian Lee Rayford, Prichard bought a tract of land on the east side of the  Mobile and Ohio railroad and developed Prichard station into a vegetable-shipping point for markets in the North and East, eventually becoming the largest wholesale buyer and shipper in the nation. Prichard built his own horse track – reputedly the finest of its day – in Prichard before horse racing’s popularity declined and the land was sold. Prichard was the grandson of Saraland settler Don Diego Alvarez.
• After 1900, Prichard began a slow and steady development. In 1925, Prichard was incorporated as a city with 3,014 people.
• During World War II Prichard became a company town as many Mobile shipbuilding companies built homes for their workers in Prichard.
• During the 1950s and 1960s, Prichard annexed historic Whistler as well as parts of Eight Mile and Kushla.
• In the 1960s, Prichard’s rigid system of segregation collapsed, and many blacks who had previously lived in the Bullshead/Neely/Trinity Gardens area of Prichard began moving into East Prichard (downtown Prichard) causing a dramatic white flight to occur. Currently Prichard is 85% black.
• In 1960, Prichard recorded a population of 47,371, making it Alabama’s largest suburb. In 1970, the population had decreased to 41,000 and by 1990 it had decreased to approximately 34,000.
• In 1970, Vigor High School on Wilson Avenue, which had been Prichard’s white high school during segregation was 70% white, by 1980, it was 80% black.
• The 1980s downtown vacancy rate was near 80%; as of 2000, it is closer to 30%.
• In the 80’s and 90’s problems with crime, drugs and middle class flight were elevated when the areas major financial and employment base left with the closing of Scott and International Paper companies and Brookley Field Air Base. This devastated the area and the city struggled to recover.
• In 1994, construction of I-165 was completed, and it has produced some economic benefits in East Prichard.
• In 1999, the city was forced to declare bankruptcy for $5.3 million in debt. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2007.
• Jesse Norwood was elected mayor in 1990, impeached 10 years later and found guilty of willful neglect of duty.
• In 2004, the Prichard Housing Authority began demolition of the Bessemer Avenue Housing Project in Bullshead.
• In November 2004, Mobile County voters narrowly (500 votes out of 100000 cast on the issue) defeated a local amendment which would have allowed Prichard to set up a special trade zone.
• Mayor Ron Davis was elected in 2004. Since Davis’ term began, Prichard has gained two major businesses, FedEx and UPS, and emerged from bankruptcy.
• During A.J. Cooper’s term, downtown was remodeled and the main entry was closed. This tremendously affected downtown as safety became an issue when people had to park behind storefronts. As a result, shoppers left and business decreased. Davis recently met with the board of Design Alabama, a non-profit group that works to further sustainable municipal design in the state. After examining the plan, Design Alabama believes making downtown more people-friendly is the focus.
• Davis is leaning on programs like Operation Eyesore, which demolishes dilapidated homes and businesses.
• In 2006, Prichard was selected as the site of the Alabama Motorsports Park.
• Built in the 1940s, Alabama Village has only three roads in and out of its 300 acres on Prichard’s old north side, and few signs mark its narrow and winding streets. The most recent census shows about 2,000 people live there, although officials say the population has decreased since it began its rapid decline in the ’70s and ’80s. Poverty is endemic, and police say the neighborhood is a hub in the city’s drug trade. Dealers shoot out street lights faster than they can be replaced. Houses in the Village are set ablaze on a regular basis. Most of them are abandoned, but occasionally the fires destroy occupied homes. Prichard recently declared 56 dilapidated houses in Alabama Village to be public nuisances and slated them for demolition.  The demolition work will cost the city about $3,000 per house, which will be assessed as liens against the owners. Low home ownership in the neighborhood was at least partly responsible for the decrepit conditions. About 95 percent of the people living in Alabama Village rent their homes, some by the month, some by the week, and often in cash. – Robert McClendon, Press-Register, 6/17/2007
  • LIGHT of the Villiage is a Christian day camp for children in Alabama Village run by John & Delores Eads – PR 7/15/2007
• Sources: Leslie King, Lagniappe, 3/13/07; Wikipedia

Northwest Mobile County

• Towns grew along the Mobile & Ohio Railroad.
• U.S. Highway 45 was built along the Mobile & Ohio RR.
• Much of the land in northwest Mobile County remains timberland.
• Towns on US 45 (north to south): Citronelle, Russell, Gulfcrest, Chunchula, Oak Grove, Mauvilla, Kushla, Eight Mile, Whistler, Prichard
• Towns on Lott Road: Citronelle, Georgetown, Prichard
• Towns on Celeste Road: Citronelle, Turnerville, Celeste, Saraland

Citronelle

• Population 3,675 (2003)
• The area was settled in 1811.
• On May 4, 1865 the last “sizable” confederate force was surrendered by General Richard Taylor under the “surrender oak”. A reenactment of this event occurs every year at Citronelle. Unfortunately, the historic oak was destroyed by a hurricane in 1902.
• The town became a resort destination because of the climate, herbs, and healing waters. Many hotels were built to accommodate the visitors.
  • Historic hotels of Citronelle include: Southern Hotel (1870), Hygeia Hotel (1892), Illinois Hotel (1895), Hotel Citronelle (1899), and the Waverly Hotel and Pullman Hotel
• 1892 The Town of Citronelle was founded. The name “Citronelle” is derived from the citronella plant.
• In 1952, the Citronelle Oil Field was discovered.
• Middle Earth Center in Citronelle is a self-sustaining home and retreat center owned by Lisa and Craig Kalloch. Their philosophy of living incorporates the use of solar power, organic gardening, rainwater harvesting and natural wetland filtration systems.
• Lambert Station was founded by William Lambert, his brother, Nathan and four sisters who migrated from Georgia and settled on land several miles south of Citronelle.  The 0ld Lambert Mission Baptist Church still stands. Behind the church is the Family Cemetery. Some of the early settlers were the Brocks, Hattensteins, Simmons, Howards and Cahalls. William Lambert gave, let or deeded the right­of-way to the Mobile & Ohio Railroad through his property at Lambert Station
• www.citronellechamber.com

Gulfcrest

• Gulfcrest is a community of fewer than 100 people about six miles south of Citronelle on U.S. 45 and includes Gulfcrest Road.
• In the mid-1800s, the community was known as Beaver Meadows (a.k.a. Beaver Mills) and was the home of one of Alabama’s first paper mills. The creek in Gulfcrest that supplied the steam engines for the mill is still known as Mill Branch. During the war the mill was used as a uniform depot. After the war the uniforms and clothing were converted into the making of bonded paper. The remains of the old mill are still standing. Tall stone walls that look much like a castle in the woods. None of the town buildings remain.
• There was a Mobile & Ohio train depot in Gulfcrest. The Eugene Vigor house was located next to the train depot. In those days, the Gulfcrest Road continued across U.S. 45, east past Mill Creek and all the way to Celeste Road.
• Now the only way to travel to the old community is to go north on U.S. 45 and turn right onto Hutto Road. Parts of the brick structure of the former paper mill are intact but are on private property.
• Gulfcrest used to have a school located on the top of the hill on Gulfcrest Road about a quarter mile west of Highway 45 next to the Gulfcrest church and cemetery.
• Dottie’s Gulfcrest Grocery has been run by Harvey and Dottie Boothe since 1993 when they bought it from Buddy Martin.
  • Harvey Boothe has been called “Mayor of Gulfcrest.” He said the “city council members” are Ron “Cowboy” Frazier, Brian Hendry, Chuck Hendry, Donnie Hendry, George Knapp, Morris Malone, Ronnie Myers and Walt Turner.
• The Pond House Nursery is a quarter-mile south of Gulfcrest Road on U.S. 45. Vernon Bentley and his wife purchased the property in 2002 and started the nursery.  – PR 1/15/2004
• Source: PR 11/4/2004

Earlville

• Earlville is a small community on the Escatawpa River at Mason’s Ferry Road.

Chunchula

• Chunchula (historic Chunehula) was a small Choctaw Settlement
• The Sturtevant brothers had a 264 acre dairy farm in Chunchula. Charles Sturtevant was interviewed for the Works Progress Administration in 1938 (see here). He said his principal hobby was fox hunting, and “Forty years ago fox were very numerous, even to catching them two hundred yards from the front gate; but now, although not go numerous, they are still plentiful.” He also had a residence in Mobile, on Old Government Street.
• In the 1930s and 1940s, Chunchula was a bustling town of turpentine stills and logging camps and lumber mills, the location of a hotel, a theater, a dance hall and other thriving businesses
• Davis General Store on U.S. 45 in Chunchula, has offered rural customers a wide variety of household items and groceries for more than 30 years. It was built by owners Eugene and Leslyee Davis. In addition to gasoline, automotive products and takeout food items, the store offers gloves, baskets, birdhouses, car stereos, pocket knives, hunting knives, hats, fishing poles, fishing tackle, dog food and large bags of corn for farm animals, hardware items such as hammers and nails, PVC pipe and caulk.
• James and Joan Malone built Heritage Homestead in Chunchula in 1993 is on 400 acres of farm and timberland., a re-creation of the type of rural farmhouse common in south Alabama from the mid-1800s through the mid-1900s. James Malone’s family came to Alabama in 1792. Before the turn of the 19th century, his great-great-great grandfather, Methodist circuit rider Ivey Malone, homesteaded a farm six miles south of where Heritage Homestead sits. The Malones are employed by the Alabama TREASURE Forest Association, he as executive director.

Mauvila

Kushla

• Kushla was a station along the Mobile & Ohio Railroad

Magee Farm

• Jacob Magee, a Mobile banker and businessman, contracted with a local slave holder for a team of skilled black slaves to construct the two story house, and associated buildings in 1848. Magee came South with the M&O Railroad and, while helping surveying crews, spotted the site on the Chickasabogue. Magee also owned several warehouses and rental houses. – 7/15/2004
  • The Farmhouse complex consisted of the main house, post office, bath house and schoolroom. He added a general store, which was operated by William Peckham from Rhode Island. 1-1/4 miles north, where the road crossed the railroad tracks, stood a small shed where travelers could wait to catch a train. The only structures still in existence today, are the main house and schoolroom. Jacob Magee had dammed the Magee Creek, in order to operate a grist mill. Other buildings added later were a barn, and at least three homes. Built in 1848 on 370 acres, it is now down to 12 acres of working farmland.
• On April 29, 1865 General Richard Taylor and General E. R. S. Canby met to negotiate a cease fire prior to the surrender of the last organized Confederate forces east of the Mississippi. the historic meeting occurred. Union General Canby arrived by train with a brigade of troops numbering around 1800 men, complete with a military band. Several hours later Confederate General Taylor (Son of president Zachary Taylor) arrived standing on the back of a railroad push cart, powered by two black servants. He was accompanied by a single military aide, Colonel Myers. The Confederate forces under General Taylor’s command surrendered at Citronelle on May 4, 1865.
• Jacob Magee passed away in 1883. The Farm remained in the Magee family until it was sold in 1898. The Farm was purchased by Alfred Henry Sturtevant, from Illinois. Sturtevant was a retired professor who founded Illinois College. It has remained in the Sturtevant family since.
  • Sturtevant’s son was the famous geneticist Alfred Henry Sturtevant. He bred the Kushla strain of Drosphilia melanogaster
  • Upon the death of its last owner, Margaret Sturtevant, in 2004, the house was purchased by the Civil War Trust. It opened as a museum in 2004.

Eight Mile

• The first Baptist church to locate in Mobile County was established between 1810 and 1820 in the Eight Mile community. The church no longer exists, but a six-foot-tall granite marker placed there in 1940 by the churches of the Mobile Baptist Association marks where Shiloh Baptist Church once stood. The marker is in the parking lot of the Petro service station.
• Eight Mile had a train station, post office, one store and about 30 families in early 1900s
• 19^th Century Eight-Mile Map

Turnerville

• Turnerville residents are studying incorporation (PR 5/5/08)

Celeste

Georgetown

• Georgetown resident Shelton Byrd puts on a free demonstration of cane syrup-making techniques annually. Byrd, whose late father, Eddie Byrd, had hosted the event from the 1950s through the 1980s, revived the tradition in 1997 after the cane-grinding mill and syrup-making equipment had lain dormant for several years. It has been an annual event in Georgetown.

West Mobile County

• Towns in west Mobile County grew along the road to Hattiesburg, MS, known as Moffet Road, which became U.S. Highway 98.
  • Moffett Road was named Moffett’s Ferry Road for a family who operated a ferry boat that crossed the Escatawpa River near the Alabama-Mississippi line. It was later shortened to Moffett Road. No first name for the family, who were believed to have lived near Wilmer, was available.
  • The road was also spelled “Moffatt”. The Alabama Legislature changed the spelling to Moffett in 1986, the city of Mobile did not change its street signs to reflect the law until about 1989.
• West Mobile County is increasingly encroached upon by westward growth from the City of Mobile, with ensuing annexation debates.
• Towns on US 98: Wilmer, Semmes
• Towns on Tanner-Williams Road: Tanner-Williams
• Towns on Dawes Road: Dawes

 Wilmer

• Wilmer was incorporated in 1970. Wilmer’s citizens, long plagued with the town’s reputation as a speed trap and a history of political chicanery, voted to dissolve the town’s incorporation 1994.
• Snuffy Smith’s Antiques and Country Store
• The Palestine Missionary Baptist Church in Wilmer was founded in 1857

Semmes

• Semmes is named after Admiral Raphael Semmes
• The Semmes Rolling Store operated in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
• Semmes residents have met recently to discuss incorporating the community into its own municipality to avoid annexation by Mobile.
• Mobile’s planning jurisdiction allowed Semmes residents to stop a large subdivision, Hopkinton Estates, from being developed in the area in 2007
• Friends of Semmes

Tanner-Williams

• Since 1929, Tanner Williams has celebrated May Day on the first Saturday in May with a king and a queen and a May Pole dance. In the fall, it celebrates Heritage Day.  – PR 5/4/2007

South Mobile County

• Dauphin Island was settled by the French by 1702. Bayou la Batre and Coden were also settled by the French on the Mississippi Sound.
• Plantations on the western shore of Mobile Bay were built by the French in the mid-1700s.
• Towns grew along the New Orleans and Mobile Railroad.
• Towns on US90: Tillmans Corner, Theodore, Irvington, St. Elmo, Grand Bay
• Towns on the Mississippi Sound (Alabama 181): Alabama Port, Coden, Bayou La Batre, Dauphin Island
• Towns on Belligrath Road: Laurendine, Fowl River, Delchamps

Tillmans Corner

• Population 15,685 (2000)
• In the late 1800’s Bob Tillman opened a grocery store and the community became known as Tillman’s Corner. James Tillman 1778 – 1860, was the progenitor of the Tillmans of Tillman’s Corner
• The main industry was Satsuma orchards and dairy farming. GM&O Railroad built a track from Lloyd’s Station to Dawes, which had several large Satsuma orchards and six packing sheds. Satsumas were picked at Dawes Station and delivered to Lloyd’s Station to be shipped. In the 1930’s most of the Satsumas were killed by a hard freeze that left dairy farms as the main industry in Tillman’s Corner. People began to move from the City of Mobile to the country when dairy farms began to become profitable.
• Around 1945, Three Notch Road was paved. In the late 50’s or early 60’s, Clover Leaf Shopping Center began to develop. A movie theater was located in the corner of the shopping center.
• The Alabama Pecan Festival is held in November each year in Tillmans Corner.
• Kroner no longer is found on maps, but until the mid-1920s a town by that name was listed on the Old Mobile and Western Railroad line. About halfway between Tillman’s Corner and Dawes, it was named after a young German immigrant, John Martin Kroner. Kroner Three Notch Road was called Union Church Road.

Theodore

• Population 6,811 (2000)
• Theodore was named for William Theodore Hieronymous, Sawmill Operator and Postmaster
• The Theodore Industrial Park was established in the 1960s
• The Antoine Dairy in the Cottage Hill Road area was demolished for a new subdivision in 1997
• The Theodore’s Historic Foundation has a museum in the old schoolhouse on Theodore-Dawes Road
• West Indies salad—a mix of marinated crabmeat and onions, created in 1947 by Bill Bayley at his Bayley’s Steakhouse on Dauphin Island Parkway on Hollingers Island. Bayley, who died in 1997, also invented fried crab claws.

Dawes

St. Elmo

Grand Bay

• Population 3,918 (2003)
• After the post office was opened in 1870, and the railroad was put through, the “town” was moved from the bay to its present site.
• George Cassibry was the first to discover the pine and magnolia wilderness of southwest Mobile County in 1857, according to state legislator and Grand Bay resident Taylor Harper.
• A brief real estate “boom” after the turn of the twentieth century brought an influx of settlers from the Northern United States. Promoted by the Grand Bay Land Company, the community now had a public school, a large nursery for fruit trees, and at least thirty businesses. In 1905, the Grand Bay Hotel opened.
• In the following years, severe winters that decimated the fruit trees caused many disappointed settlers to leave the area.
• Grand Bay residents are now investigating incorporation (PR 5/5/08)
• 78 million pounds per year of human waste sludge from MAWSS is spread onto 3000 acres of farm fields around Grand Bay, most owned by coffee magnate Leroy Hill.  The practice has saved MAWSS $10 to $15 million over the past 10 years according to  MAWSS. – PR 8/31/08
• El Cazador Museum
• Sources: Citizens for a Better Grand Bay Website (Muriel Donald) Map of Historical Sites

Bayou La Batre

• City of Bayou La Batre Website
• Bayou La Batre Area Chamber of Commerce
• Population 2,754 (2003)
• Originally called “Rivere D’Erbane,” the bayou acquired present name from French-maintained battery of artillery on West Bank for defense. It was the first permanent settlement on south Mobile County mainland.
• Bayou La Batre was founded in 1786, when French-born Joseph Bouzage (Bosarge) was awarded a 1,259-acre Spanish land grant on the West Bank of the bayou
• Founded 1786 when Joseph Bouzage (Bosarge), 1733-1795, moved into the area and was awarded a 1259 acre Spanish land grant on West Bank.
  • Born Poitiers, France, Bouzage came to Gulf Coast ca. 1760. Married Catherine Louise Boudreau 5 June, 1762. Father of seven children including one son, Jean Baptiste.
• The City of Bayou La Batre was incorporated in1955.
• The large Asian population (33%) is attributable to a large influx of Vietnamese American shrimpers as immigrants following the Vietnam War. Bayou la Batre was a popular destination for such immigrants because it fosters and continues to foster a similar shrimping industry to that of Vietnam.
• Bayou La Batre is a shipbuilding center and seafood-processing harbor for fishing boats and shrimp boats.
• In 2005, Tim James, a Greenville-based developer and son of former Gov. Fob James, began a $200 million plan to transform the Bayou into a tourist destination. The James project called for the purchase of city-owned waterfront land. James also has pledged to build a new, city-owned sewage processing plant. James and his partner Mobile attorney Braxton Counts, and Mobile real estate businessman Bernie Heggeman signed purchase option agreements with dozens of property owners. – USA Today 7/25/2005
  • After the Hurricane Katrina, rising insurance premiums caused James to postpone his plan. He offered a deal without the road and water improvements. But a $25 million federal grant covered the costs of a new water plant and a grant for $7 million would enable more than 100 homes to be rebuilt. The town hired the Urban Land Institute, which recommended rustic, low-impact properties instead of selling Lightning Point to James. In October the city council informed James that it would not sell the land. – Christian Science Monitor 10/26/06
  • Part of the land included 7.4 acres owned by the Parrish family south of the city docks. There had been decades of quarreling between the city and the Parrish family over two significant issues: the location of the property’s northern border and whether the city can use eminent domain to acquire the Parrishes’ land. The Parrishes purhased the property in the 1960s, with plans to develop a hotel and marina there, but he was soon in an argument with city officials about the property’s boundary. In 2007, Mobile Circuit Judge Rick Stout ruled in favor of the Parrish family — giving the family clear title. After Stout’s ruling, a the land was listed for sale for $8 million. The property has no road or utility access without obtaining an easement through the city’s docks property.
  • Mayor Stan Wright insisted that the city has the responsibility to protect its docks land by purchasing the Parrish property or acquiring it through eminent domain proceedings. Once the city owns the land, it will build sea walls along the shore. In 1969, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the city could not take the Parrish property because it did not lie within city limits. Alabama law allows municipalities to invoke eminent domain only within their own corporate limits. Wright said the land has since been annexed. City officials said a state law passed by the Legislature in 1994 placed the property in the Bayou’s city limits and eliminated the need for the owner’s approval.  The legislation pulled a large swath of coastal land and waters into the Bayou La Batre city limits and exempted oil and gas companies in the area from city taxes or regulation.
• The Hurricane Katrina-ruined strip of mom-and-pop stores that constituted Bayou La Batre’s commercial center from the 1920s until the local economy went south in the late 1970s was demolished in 2007 – PR 3/27/07

Coden

• Coden’s name is derived from the French “Coq d’Inde,” meaning “Turkey.”
• At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the area was known as a resort, with the Rolston Hotel drawing guests from around the region. The hotel was destroyed by a hurricane in the early Twentieth Century, and the community fell on hard times.
• Fresh seafood is available daily on Shell Belt Road from fishing boats returning to Bayou Coden.
• Mary’s Place (5075 Hwy 188) was opened by Mary Hunter in 1935; Ms. Hunter served her home-cooked Creole specialties to many famous diners including Greta Garbo; closed briefly after Mary’s death, but reopened in 1990
• Organizations: The Coden Community House, Coden Community Associations, South Bay Community Alliance
• The Portersville Revival  Group

Alabama Port/Heron Bay

• Alabama Port was a resort in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The Bay Shore Railroad was built in the late 1800’s to carry tourists. The area was well known for its medicinal spring water. The storm of 1906 was the start of the downfall of the resort area.
• A fish-canning factory was a major source of income. It was rebuilt twice after powerful storms hit the town in 1906 and 1916.
• Its economy and people are largely dependent on the seafood and marine industries as well as chemical plants.
• Alabama Port holds an annual Crab Festival.
• Heron Bay was rimmed in the 1920s and 1930s with clusters of “camps” where oystermen lived during the season.
• Heron Bay’s landmark Zirlott Store closed in 1996 after four-generation run

Dauphin Island

• Dauphin Island is a barrier island off the coast of Alabama.
  • The eastern, wider portion of the island is shaded by thick stands of pine trees, but the narrow, western part of the island features scrub growth and few trees
  • As a barrier island, the size and shape of Dauphin Island have changed significantly over the years. In the earliest reliable maps, Dauphin Island was twice as long as it is now, encompassing the present Petit Bois Island on the Mississippi line. The two islands broke apart in the 19th century, and shortly afterward earned separate names.
  • Changes in Dauphin Island (Press-Register Graphic)
• Dauphin Island is also the name of the incorporated community situated on the island.
• The island has a permanent population of 1,423 (2003).
• Dauphin Island is home to Dauphin Island Sea Lab and The Estuarium public aquarium.
• Although the island has several bird sanctuaries, the main one is the 164 acre (663,684 m²) Audubon Bird Sanctuary.
  • Dauphin Island is the first landfall encountered by many birds as they migrate north from South America, and as a consequence many species can be found there.
• The first Sand Island Lighthouse, authorized in 1834, was replaced by a structure 150 feet high, at a cost of $35,000, that was dynamited by Confederate forces. The present lighthouse (1873; in use until 1970), has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its ownership was recently transferred from the Department of Interior to the Town of Dauphin Island.

Dauphin Island History

• Sources: The Harbinger, Press-Register, A HISTORY OF DAUPHIN ISLAND UNDER FIVE FLAGS, 1699-1989 , IN ADVERSITY WE THRIVE  by Frances Young
• Dauphin Island was named after French King Louis XIV’s great-grandson and heir, the Dauphin.
• Shell middens, perhaps 1500 years old, attest to at least seasonal occupation by the Native American Mound Builder culture.
  • Shell Mound Park, along the Island’s northern shore, is administered by Alabama Marine Resources Division.
• 1519 the Spanish explorer Alonzo Pineda was the first documented European to visit, staying long enough to map the island.
• 1699 Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville established a temporary settlement on the island, which he named Massacre Island.
  • “I remained on the island, which I am naming Massacre because we found on it, a spot where more than 60 men or women had been slain,” Iberville wrote. Research by later historians indicated that the skeletons were those of people who had died in an epidemic. The island would keep that name for 12 years, until residents persuaded Bienville to change it to Dauphine. Some people “consider the name of Massacre as harsh,” Bienville wrote to French authorities in 1711. The site became Mobile’s port after the town was founded in 1702.
  • The settlement was a trading depot, unloading goods from Santo Domingo and France, and collecting furs. Mobile Bay, before it was dredged, was too shallow for ocean-going vessels.
• By 1712, Dauphin Island had a secure port with a channel at least 20 feet deep and a harbor that would accommodate 15 large ships and many other smaller ones. Ships from France would unload passengers and cargo at Dauphin Island that would then be transferred to Mobile or Biloxi.
• 1717 A hurricane drove sand into the deep port, ending Dauphin Island’s use as a major harbor and Port Dauphin was eventually abandoned.
• 1719 With Spain and France at war, the Spaniards from Cuba twice attacked and pillaged settlements of lower bay and Dauphin Island. French authorities ordered Bienville to attack Pensacola. Bienville took a small fleet with a few of his own men and a few hundred Choctaws and captured it, immediately deciding to transfer his base there because it was the better harbor. A few months later, however, 2,000 Spanish troops arrived and recaptured the city. Bienville retreated, withstood an assault at Dauphin Island, and with the help of French reinforcements, retook Pensacola within weeks. The Spanish would not attack at Mobile Bay again for 60 years.
• Dauphin Island was captured by the British in 1766 during the Seven Years’ War, but retaken by the Spanish in 1780 during the American Revolutionary War. During the War of 1812, American forces captured the island (1813) to prevent British forces from using it.
• In 1783, a spanish grant was recorded to Joseph Moro. At his death he willed this to his niece, Euphrosie L’May. A patent from the United States to Augustine LaCoste, her son in 1838 covered 2264.12 acres of Dauphin Island. Later portions of this were sold to Garrow, Brown, Lyon and others.
• Fort Gaines on the eastern tip of the island was built between 1821 and 1848. It was occupied by Confederate forces in 1861, and captured by Federal troops during the Battle of Mobile Bay.
• Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries people lived on Dauphin Island. These islanders lived by fishing, farming and raising cattle and goats. Many of the early names on the island were Ladnier, Lamy, Raley, Sprinkle, Collier, Patronas, Mallon, Bosarge, and Previtoe.
• Most of the local people were deeded fifty foot lots in exchange for quit claim deeds. In 1885, we find quit claim deeds from Gillette, McNulty, Semmes, Austill, and Mallon to the Dauphin Island Improvement Company. This was to be the first major developer and in 1910 became incorporated as the Dauphin Island Company.
  • Local people holding deed from the Dauphin Island Company are classified as having “grandfather lots.”Only one old grandfather property remains south of Bienville Boulevard today. All others are north. This small property on the north side belongs to the Previtos.
  • In 1900, the Gulf Land and Harbor Company was formed. This became Dauphin Island Railway and Harbor Company.
  • Both of these properties eventually became Gulf Properties and this company was transferred to Forney Johnston, in 1953.
  • Areas such as Pass Drury and Silver Cay were added later by dredging and finger filling the swamp land.
  • There was a great deal of animosity between the developers and the native people. Only a few held positive deeds. Among these were the Steiner and Sprinkle Subdivisions.
    • The Steiner property had been sub-divided and recorded in 1910.
    • John Sprinkle had taken the Mobile and Dauphin Island Railroad Company to court in 1896 to reclaim his property.
• By the early 1900s, the federal government owned nearly 1,000 acres around Fort Gaines, a tract that extended to the present-day Cadillac Square Park. In 1911, Congress sold 700 acres of this land to the Dauphin Island Railway and Harbor Company on the condition that within four years the company would build a railroad bridge from the mainland, and a dock on the Gulf. During the next several years, the syndicate involved in the railway project bought and consolidated ownership of most of Dauphin Island.
  • It was during these years that the name of Forney Johnston first appears in probate court records. Johnston was the son of former Alabama Governor and U.S. Senator, Joseph F. Johnston, who served in the Congress from 1907 until his death in 1913.
• In 1926 the federal government sold Fort Gaines to the City of Mobile.
• By 1929 one company, Gulf Properties Corporation, owned almost all of Dauphin Island. Frank Boykin, joined Forney Johnston, Thomas, Boykin, Vredenburgh, Dewberry, Aparicola and Rester to form Gulf Properties Corporation. According to a probate court document the Gulf Properties Corporation was organized in 1930 to acquire and hold land on Dauphin Island until a bridge and other developments would add “to the value and use or marketability of the land thereon.” By 1953 Gulf Properties held most of Dauphin Island.
  • Another version, attributed to Frank Boykin, of how Gulf Properties acquired the island appeared in a 1973 book by Edward Boykin, Everything’s Made for Love. Boykin met Breck Musgrove, of Jasper, Alabama, on a train trip from New York in 1929. Musgrove approached Boykin for a $50,000 loan, offering to “put up Dauphin Island as collateral.” Boykin and several others made the loan. Eighteen months later, after Musgrove failed to pay it back, Boykin, Forney Johnston, T. J. Rester, and Judge Matt Boykin, Frank Boykin’s brother, took title to “over ninety percent of Dauphin Island.” The partners then formed the Gulf Properties Corporation.
• The Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo began on the island in 1929 under Frank Boykin’s leadership.
• In 1950 the island had around 250 residents, a couple of small stores, daily service by boat, and a one-room school that had opened in 1898. Recreational fisherman had built several piers on the island.
• The Mobile Chamber of Commerce purchased Dauphin Island from Forney and Gulf Properties Corporation in 1954. Within two years, the Chamber had subdivided and sold over 2,000 lots, raising more than $6 million. It had paid $950,000 in cash for the land.
  • In their deal with the Chamber, Boykin, Forney and their partners, now organized as West Dauphin Corporation, held onto the western most eight miles of the island.
  • The income from the Chamber’s sale of the lots went into a trust set up by the Chamber at the Merchants National Bank. The terms of the Dauphin Island Trust Indenture set up the institutions to govern the island and kept the income from the project tax-exempt. Under the trust, the Chamber disbursed money for its ambitious building program.
  • In these years it seemed that the Chamber intended to develop the island for all Alabamians. On the west side of the island the Chamber constructed, for the public, a $500,000 beach resort named Sand Dunes Casino, set on a one-mile stretch of Gulf beachfront. This park was equipped with a fishing pier. At the east end of the island the Chamber remodeled a former military building into a recreation facility, calling it the Fort Gaines Club. The Chamber also began the restoration of Fort Gaines itself. Also on the east end, the Chamber built a camp ground located near another public beach. The Chamber also set aside several other parcels of land for the pubic.
  • For the private use of property owners, the Chamber built the Isle Dauphine Club, equipped with a swimming pool, an eighteen-hole golf course, and a clubhouse. The club was set on a mile of Gulf beach. The Chamber also set aside another three miles of Gulf beach and several private parks for the property owners.
• Two organizations were set up under the Dauphin Island Trust. These were the Dauphin Island Property Owners Association and the Dauphin Island Park and Beach Board. When the trust was signed in 1953, the Chamber intended that the Association and the Board would run the vacation island. This trust, drawn by the Chamber with Merchants National Bank, handled the money from the land sales. Neither of the organizations had the power to tax, but as the island’s needs grew, and local and state governments proved unwilling to fund infrastructure or new public beaches, the island reached a crisis.
  • The trust divided up the $6 million raised from land sales after the Chamber paid its costs, seventy percent to the Property Owners Association and thirty percent to the Park and Beach Board.
• The Chamber set up the Property Owners Association as a nonprofit corporation governed by a nine-member board. The trust placed three major tasks with the Association: develop a water system, construct a public golf course, and develop parks, beaches and other recreation sites for the use of owners of lots in its subdivisions.
  • In 1979 the Property Owners Association sold its water system to the newly established Dauphin Island Water and Sewer Authority. The Association still owns the Isle Dauphine Club, with its swimming pool, tennis courts, restaurant and golf course.
  • While the trust required the Association to build a public golf course, the course the Chamber opened was private. The Development of Dauphin Island, Alabama, told how the island golf course became private: “In 1954 the federal courts ruled the rights of owners of semi- private golf courses to decide who could play and who could not play….we decided to re-design the course and move it to the property adjoining the Isle Dauphine Country Club which was of course a private operation.” The deed to the site of the Chamber’s original course, property that formerly belonged to the City of Mobile, prevented private use of the land. In 1991 the Isle Dauphine Club and Golf Course, still owned by the Association, opened to the public after the club declared bankruptcy. The Association still owns a mile of beach front at the Isle Dauphine Club.
• The Park and Beach Board was a public board, unlike the Property Owners Association. Its three members serve six-year terms, and each is recommended by the Mobile County Commission and approved by the Governor. The Governor has always approved the Commissioners’ recommendations. Under the trust, the Board was charged with the development of public parks, beaches and other community and public recreation facilities. The Board was a “quasi state agency” structured so that the island would be for all the state, open to everybody.
  • The original public facilities included Fort Gaines, a recreation building named the Fort Gaines Club and the Sand Dunes Casino, with its mile of public beach and a fishing pier. Not far from Fort Gaines was a public campground. Within a few years the Fort Gaines Club burned to the ground. Today the land is either part of the campground or leased to the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. The Casino was bulldozed in 1971 at the county’s expense.
  • Today the Board owns property worth over $200 million and operates a number of sites for the public: a campground, the Audubon Bird Sanctuary, Fort Gaines, Cadillac Park, and two fishing piers. The Casino with its public resort, has never been replaced. During the 1980s a $250,000 project, funded by the state Conservation Department and the Board, built a 1,000 feet of boardwalk, pavilions, restrooms, showers, and a parking lot at the old Casino site, but by the mid-1990s erosion and storm had destroyed much of that property.
  • The Board has no budget from the county or the state. The Board’s income comes from fees it charges at its campground, fishing piers and Fort Gaines, and a small amount of oil lease money.
• The bridge to the mainland, Gordon Persons Bridge, was opened in 1955 and visits to the beach became an easy day trip for Mobilians
  • After World War II, local officials approached the Folsom Administration with a plan for a bridge. Governor “Big Jim” Folsom balked at the proposal, complaining that the tract the Gulf Properties Corporation offered to donate for bridge construction was insufficient. The Mobile Press Register quoted Folsom: “The Gulf people own all but 40 acres of the island and the section which the city of Mobile will turn over to the state.” Despite Folsom’s rejection, in 1949 the Mobile Chamber of Commerce persuaded the county to hold a referendum authorizing a one-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax to fund a bridge. In 1949, voters defeated the proposal. With Governor Folsom out of office, local leaders approached his successor, Gordon Persons, with the new plan. The Chamber would buy and subdivide the island into lots and then sell the lots based on a pledge that a bridge would be built with the profits. At the time the Chamber had an important contact with the governor, for one of the members of the Chamber’s bridge committee was also a member of the Alabama State Bridge Commission. Persons and his highway director approved the bridge project, but only on the condition that local sources come up with $2 million of the bridge’s cost. In June 1954 the Mobile County Board of Revenue issued $2 million in revenue bonds for the bridge. The Chamber bought the entire bond issue with loans secured by the subdivided land it planned to sell.
  • The bridge to the island was a financial success, and the state eliminated the toll in 1963.
  • The bridge was destroyed by Hurricane Frederic in 1979; the community received $32 million to rebuild the bridge, in spite of warnings from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, because it would encourage development.
• In 1959 a Holiday Inn opened on the island, eleven years before the first chain motel opened in Gulf Shores.
• In the 1970s, the Sand Dunes Casino was closed and in ruins, and the Fort Gaines Club had burned. Neither facility was replaced, and in 1999, there were still no lifeguards, changing rooms, or bathrooms on the island’s pubic beach. Behind the loss of the public facilities lay the terms of the Dauphin Island Trust.
• In 1988 island residents voted to incorporate the City of Dauphin Island.
  • The Board and the Association were often at odds with the new government.
• In 1999 federal and state taxpayers spent about $1.3 million to build a man-made sand dune on Dauphin Island. The dune, nearly three miles long, sat entirely on private land along the Gulf.
  • The Harbinger asked Susan Rees of the Army Corps of Engineers what provision the Corps had made in the berm’s design to allow the public access to the beach. Rees said “none” because there was “no requirement for public access.” She added that local officials asked Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor for his approval of a berm constructed on private land with public money. The Corps does not expect the artificial dune to stop flooding for long, for its public notice described the project as “an emergency protective berm.”
• The island that suffered $7 million in property damage due to Frederic was host to over a quarter billion dollars in property by 2000.
  • In 1980, after Hurricane Frederick, the Wall Street Journal carried a page-one article about Dauphin Island. Under the headline “Down The Drain?” it blamed weak construction regulations and government-backed flood insurance for “unwise building” on the island.
  • Since 2000, the barrier island has been struck by five hurricanes and has received millions more in federal disaster aid.
  • Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge devastated the island, wiping clean most of the island’s west end.
  • In October 2008, island leaders announced plans to pursue restoration of the island’s east end where a few hundred feet of beach has disappeared in recent decades. A preliminary report said the project could cost up to $12.8 million.
• The town hired ERIS Inc., a Montgomery-based economic development consultantcy, for one-year at a cost of $125,000 to initiate new economic activity, part of the town’s long-term strategic plan developed this year. Under one plan, the town would purchase and lease undeveloped land on the western end of the island. A boat would ferry visitors across the breach and booths for retailers and an entertainment pavilion would be built on the other side. The “Sunset Beach” development would cost an estimated $2 million, with $300,000 for building facilities and $1.7 million for land. – PR 12/5/2007
• Dauphin Island Foundation

West End

• The island’s west end has long been vanishing. The west end is losing sand on the south side and gaining on the north.
  • A $1 million, taxpayer-funded protective sand wall was constructed in front of the west end’s “front-row” houses in June 2000. The berm stood for 27 months before Tropical Storm Isidore wiped it away in 2002.
  • A sand berm was built in 2007 at a cost of $3.6 million in an attempt to protect the Town of Dauphin Island’s infrastructure along Bienville Boulevard. The berm was wiped away by Gustav’s storm surge in Sept. 2008. FEMA decided not to fund rebuilding of the berm.  – PR 12/4/08
• The west end beach is privately owned by either individual property owners or by the private nonprofit Dauphin Island Property Owners Association, so it’s difficult to use public money on that land.
• In March 2007, Dauphin Island Property Owners Association members voted to to transfer to the town the 3½ miles of west side beach it had owned since 1953, making it eligible for public beach restoration funds.
  • Two property owners filed a lawsuit shortly after the vote, claiming any sale or conveyance of the property would be illegal since that deed restrictions bar the association from giving away the property. Lawyers for both sides said that the case is being delayed until a key report in a federal lawsuit over the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ dredging practices in the Mobile Bay ship channel is issued – PR 11/15/07
• A lawsuit by the Property Owners Association blaming west end beach erosion on the U.S. Corps of Engineers’ dredging practices in the Mobile Bay ship channel has been pending in federal court since 2000.
  • A federal judge approved a settlement in 2006 that created a panel of four experts to study whether the corps had a role in the beach erosion. The report is due Jan. 10, 2009.
• The idea of a public west end beach is part of a new strategic plan for the island, authored by a Seattle-based consultant. The plan recommends developing the more stable east end, while exploring other options for the west end, including an end to development there, according to a draft of the plan.
• In June 2008, Dauphin Island bought $2 million worth of property for a public beach on the west end of the island with 200 front feet of waterfront that extends east-west from the Gulf to the Mississippi Sound and leased another 200 front feet. The sellers, West Dauphin LLC, donated a third parcel with 1,000 front feet, west of the mile-wide breach The town plans to build a 185-unit parking lot where spaces will lease for $20 per day. The public beach will have lifeguards, restrooms, showers and tiki huts leased to vendors – PR 6/8/08

Far West End

• In 2005 Hurricane Katrina created a pass in the center of the island, now measuring almost a mile across and 9½ feet deep. Just after Katrina, the gap was only half that wide. The new “middle” island that formed after Katrina now seems to be sliding toward Petit Bois and away from Dauphin Island. – PR 10/14/07
  • Scientists initially believed that the gap was closing, as happened after a quarter-mile-wide breach formed in Dauphin Island during a 1948 hurricane.
  • The new island is roughly 7 miles long, making it just slightly smaller than what’s left of Dauphin Island, which is now about 8 miles long. And the new island appears to be growing as it moves away from Dauphin Island. Some local fishermen have taken to calling it “West Dauphin Island.” Others are coming up with storm-related names like “Katrina Key.” State officials don’t know what to call the island and are unsure who should get to name it.
  • Petit Bois is part of the federal Gulf Islands National Seashore, as are Mississippi’s other barrier islands: Cat, Horn and East and West Ship islands. The park also includes islands in Florida, but skips over Alabama entirely. The idea of making Alabama coastal areas part of the national seashore met strong resistance within the state when the park was created in the 1960s.
• The West Dauphin Corporation, owned by the descendants of Boykin and Johnston, owns the western most eight miles of the island. Many of those parcels are now buried in the mile-wide pass. The section that is under water was targeted for development by Riley Boykin Smith a few years ago, though nothing came of the proposal. It is unclear how the break might affect property rights, especially if the new island continues moving away from the ownership plots outlined in county tax records. Smith believes that the gap eventually will fill in, and he said that he and his fellow property owners still have claim to the island. Those owners have been paying taxes on their properties for years, and nearly all of them have leased out mineral rights for natural gas exploration since the 1980s, according to county records.
• In the 1970s some politicians wanted the state to purchase the West Dauphin Corporation property for a public park. The attempt almost succeeded in 1978 when L. W. “Red” Noonan, then a state senator, introduced a bill to fund the purchase. The most recent offer to open the west end to the public came in 1996 when its owners offered to donate land for a public beach if the county would build roads, water supply and sewer connections for two miles of private development. The remaining six miles would be offered for sale to the state or a conservation organization. The deal fell through when a citizens group, Forever Dauphin Island, stopped the development with a lawsuit against ADEM.
• “When Riley Boykin Smith tried to have the Forever Wild Board acquire the extreme west end of Dauphin Island, with the understanding he was going to develop the majority of the west end, I told everyone, including him, that I would not support this action. He was telling the board that if we didn’t we would be, in essence, stopping the deal, when, in reality, ADEM had violated their own procedural regs in even considering his permit request.” – Myrt Jones

Nearby Areas

McIntosh (Washington County)

• British Captain John McIntosh established a plantation at the present-day town of McIntosh, by the Mobile River.
• Before the chemical plants, McIntosh was a logging town. Olin Corp. arrived in 1952, and Ciba-Geigy Corp. a short time later.
• Olin and Ciba are now Superfund sites due to mercury and other chemical contamination

MOWA Indians

• 3,600 MOWA Choctaws live on 300-acres west of Mount Vernon.
• Forty-five families escaped the Choctaw Removal of 1830, remaining in north Mobile and Washington County. These Choctaws were joined by other refugee Indians in subsequent years, and by a few disaffected non-Indian families from the regional area.  – PR 7/8/07
• In the 1940s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs decided that these communities scattered across three states did not qualify for federal government recognition. A year later, however, Shell Oil Co. found oil on lands held by Choctaw families in Mississippi. Almost overnight, the Bureau of Indian Affairs reversed itself and granted federal recognition to the communities now included in the tribal nation known as the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. This was in order to negotiate and receive revenues from land and oil leases.
• Alabama recognized the MOWA as a tribe 1979, but that brings little monetary aid.
• Members of the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians have long petitioned the federal government to recognize them officially as an Indian tribe, an acknowledgment that would make them eligible to receive millions of dollars in aid for education, health care and economic development programs.
  • In 1991, the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs voted in favor of federal recognition for the tribe. But the committee’s decision was overturned by a pro-gaming alliance of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians’ Tribal Chief Phillip Martin and former Poarch Band of Creek Indians’ Tribal Chairman Eddie Tullis.
  • The MOWA submitted a petition to the Bureau of Indian of Affairs such a document to the bureau in the early 1990s. The bureau of Indian Affairs first denied the MOWA petition in 1997, and the secretary of the interior refused to hear any further appeals in 1999.
  • U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile, is sponsoring a bill that would declare the MOWA as a federally recognized tribe. The bill languishes in committee. Similar bills have failed in the past.   – PR 7/2/07
  • In July 2007 the MOWA Band of Choctaw filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Mobile to gain official recognition from the Department of the Interior. The U.S. attorney argues in the motion to dismiss that, because more than six years have passed since the government denied the appeals, the MOWA cannot legally sue.  If the MOWA suit fails, the tribe’s only hope for federal recognition would be an act of Congress.  – PR 7/21/2007, PR 12/1/07
• MOWA Choctaw Website

Mobile County Geography

Lakes

• Big Creek Lake Landing
• Cedar Creek
• Douglas Lake
• Three Mile Creek Lake is located at Stanton Road at Three Mile Creek

Rivers

• Dog River
• Escatawpa River
• Fowl River
• ·         McNally Park is located on Park Road along Perch Creek.  It features a boat ramp, picnic tables, a playground and baseball fields. 

Parks

• Bay Front Park is located in the Alabama Port community about a mile north of the Dauphin Island Bridge.  The area is also very popular with windsurfers and people wading for crabs, mullet, and flounder. Others just enjoy the relaxation that comes from sitting and staring out over the bay watching ocean going ships and barges as they make their way up and down the ship channel.
• Bohemian Park at County Road 48
• Browns Landing Park
• Chickasabogue Park at Chickasabogue Creek in Eight Mile is an 1100 acre outdoor recreation facility and wildlife refuge.
• ·         Day Lake at Tercentennial Park
• Dead Lake Marina includes RV and tent camping, cabin rentals, lake fishing, river fishing, launch ramp, covered boat slip rentals, houseboat dockage, bait and tackle, limited groceries and canoe rentals.  Most of the activities at the Marina center around the excellent fishing available in Dead Lake and the adjacent Mobile/Tensaw Delta. Bass, bluegill, crappie, catfish, and striped bass are the most sought after species in the upper delta, while saltwater fish such as flounder, speckled trout, white trout, redfish, drum, and sheepshead can be caught in the lower delta and Mobile Bay.
• ·         Lusher Park is located on N. Dog River Drive.  It features a boat ramp, baseball fields, a basketball court and bathrooms.  Lakes
• Municipal (Langan) Park is located on Zeigler Boulevard.  
• W. L. Holland Management Area
• Meaher State Park