Mobile, Alabama

About Mobile, Alabama

Mobile (IPA: /moʊˈbiːl/) is the third most populous city in the Southern U.S. state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 198,915 as of the 2000 census. Mobile is the principal municipality of the Mobile Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 399,843 residents which is composed solely of Mobile County and is the second largest MSA in the state. Mobile is included in the Mobile-Daphne-Fairhope Combined Statistical Area with a total population of 540,258, the second largest CSA in the state.

The earliest origins of Mobile began with a Muskhogean Native American people in the fortified Mississippian town of Mauvila, also spelled Maubila, which Hernando de Soto's Spanish expedition destroyed in 1540. This earlier town is believed to have been further north than is the current city, but the later Mobilian tribe that the French colonists found in the area of Mobile Bay is theorized by scholars to have been descended from this earlier group of people. It is from this latter tribe that Mobile gained its name. The city began as the first capital of colonial French Louisiana in 1702, and during its first 100 years, Mobile was a colony for France, then Britain, and lastly Spain. Mobile first became a part of the United States of America` in 1813, left the United States with Alabama in 1861 to become a part of the Confederate States of America, and then back to the United States in 1865.

Located at the junction of the Mobile River and Mobile Bay on the northern Gulf of Mexico, the city is the only seaport in Alabama. The Port of Mobile has always played a key role in the economic health of the city beginning with the city as a key trading center between the French and Native Americans[10] down to its current role as the 10th largest port in the United States.[11]