The Pink Motel That Guided Shrimpers Home: Remembering Dauphin Island’s Moulin Rouge
Before the bridge, Dauphin Island was a village of 200 with goats in the trees and cattle on the beach. A B-24 pilot named Aubrey Bishop built its first motel…
Alabama’s Bicentennial: How Mobile Shaped the Road to 1819 Statehood
As Alabama marked its 200th year of statehood, local historians point back to Mobile's outsized role in the events of 1817-1819 that split the old Mississippi Territory and created the…
Remembering Hurricane Ivan 10 Years Later on the Alabama Coast
Ten years after Hurricane Ivan slammed into Baldwin County's beaches, the storm's record-setting surge and unusual second life still resonate along the Alabama coast.
Mobile History: The Story Behind Festorazzis Coffee Saloon on Royal Street
Long before coffee shops became a fixture of nearly every American downtown, Mobile had one that locals considered without equal: Festorazzis Coffee Saloon, a Royal Street institution that opened in…
New History Book Traces Mobile Bay From Past to Present
A new local history book, Mobile Bay: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, has arrived at Bienville Books and other outlets, offering readers a wide-ranging look at the estuary that shapes life…
The Legend of the Boyington Oak: An 1834 Mobile Murder That Still Haunts a Downtown Graveyard
Long before true-crime podcasts, Mobile had its own sensational murder case — one still remembered nearly two centuries later through a single live oak tree growing behind the old Church…
The Clotilda’s Secret Voyage and the Founding of Mobile’s Africatown
One of the more remarkable chapters in Mobile County’s history begins with a bet. In 1860, Mobile shipyard owner Timothy Meaher wagered $100,000 with friends that he could defy the…
A Local History Column Revisits Downtown Mobile’s Fading Landmarks
A nostalgia-driven local history column revisited the old Mobile Greyhound Bus Station and the long-debated location of Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff, reviving interest in pieces of downtown Mobile's past.