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Alabama 
{State Bird, Yellow
hammer} {State flower, Camellia} {State tree, Long leaf
Southern Pine}
Cheif Crops: cotton,
peanuts, cattle,poultry, catfish.
Economy: oil, fishing,
electronics, textiles, processed foods, rubber products.
Alabama's Gulf coastline
has an abundance of fine sand beaches, with clear blue waters. The coast
turns inward to the city of Mobile , featuring antebellum buildings
in a shaded center. Agriculture: pecan, peach
and watermelons.
Top
Events
The
azalea blooming season at Bellingrath Gardens & Home south of Mobile
traditionally peaks in March. Research indicates the average visitor travels
408 miles to reach the gardens in Theodore.
The Aaron 499-mile NASCAR race at Talladega Superspeedway draws upwards of 180,000 fans. The average fan travels 391 miles to Talladega and stays three nights. The Dream Weekend is April 22-25.
Nationwide Tour Golf Championship at the Capitol Hill course in Prattville will be televised internationally. Some 55 golfers will compete Oct. 25-31 for 20 spots on the PGA Tour.
Superbike Championship at the Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, acknowledged as the finest road track in America. It will be televised on the Speed channel May 14-16.
The original Mardi Gras in Mobile, one of the oldest events in America. First held in 1703, the festival culminates Feb. 24.
Antiques from the U.S. State Department’s collection "Becoming a Nation" will be displayed at the Huntsville Museum of Art beginning May 22. Visitors will have four months to see this exhibit.
National Shrimp Festival, held along the beach at Gulf Shores on Oct. 7-10. Attendance is often 200,000 food lovers. The average visitor travels 203 miles and stays three nights.
Alabama-Auburn football game is scheduled for Tuscaloosa on Nov. 20. The game is usually broadcast on national television.
Trail of Tears Motorcycle Ride on U.S. 72 commemorates the removal of Native Americans in the 1830s. Upwards of 100,000 cyclists participate in this event held the third weekend in September between Scottsboro and Tuscumbia.
World’s Longest Yard Sale stretches from Gadsden and Fort Payne into Ohio in August. The event is usually featured on several cable channels.
Just 250 miles from north to south, ALABAMA ranges from the fast-flowing rivers, waterfalls and lakes of the Appalachian foothills to the subtropical bayous and white beaches of the Gulf Coast . Most of its industry is concentrated in the north , around rejuvenated Birmingham , and Huntsville , first home of the nation's space program. The sun-scorched farmlands of middle Alabama envelop sober Montgomery , the state capital. Away from the French-influenced coastal strip around attractive Mobile , fundamentalist Protestant attitudes have traditionally backed a succession of right-wing demagogues, such as George Wallace , the four-time state governor who received ten million votes in the 1968 presidential election.
Alabama's narrow share of the Gulf coastline is blessed with an abundance of fine white-sand beaches, laundered by clear blue waters. The coast veers sharply inward to the port city of Mobile , featuring hundreds of antebellum buildings in a tree-shaded center. Away from the water's edge, agriculture, dominated by pecan, peach and watermelon growing, flourishes on the gently sloping coastal plain.
Northern Alabama , on the trailing edges of the Appalachians, is brightened up by the mountain lakes, rivers and canyons of the Tennessee River Valley . The area's first white settlers were small farmers who had little in common with the big plantation owners further south, and attempted to dissociate from the Confederacy during the Civil War. Substantial postwar mineral finds led to an industrial boom that peaked in the early Thirties.
Southern Alabama - memorably depicted in Harper Lee's child's-eye view of racial conflict, To Kill a Mockingbird - still consists mostly of small, sleepy, God-fearing rural communities. Only state capital Montgomery , with a popu lation of just over 200,000, achieves metropolitan status. It lies in the heart of the Black Belt , originally named for the rich loamy soil, but these days more usually taken to refer to the region's ethnic make-up. Cotton was the major earner here until the boll weevil infestation of 1915. Now it has been supplanted (officially) by soybeans, corn and peanuts.
The rapid transformation of farmland into the city of BIRMINGHAM began in 1870, when two railroad routes met in the Jones Valley, a hundred miles south of Huntsville. What attracted speculators was not the scenery, but what lay under it - a mixture of iron ore, limestone and coal, perfect for the manufacture of iron and steel. The expansion of heavy industry was finally brought to an abrupt halt by the Depression. Today iron and steel production account for only a few thousand jobs, but new service and medical industries have helped transform this once smog-filled metropolis into a prosperous and pleasant city.
MONTGOMERY
's Black Belt position, 90 miles south of Birmingham and 160 west of Atlanta,
made it a natural political center for the plantation elite, leading to
its adoption as state capital in 1846 and temporary capital of the Confederacy
fifteen years later. Despite its administrative importance, Montgomery
is strangely quiet, largely because many businesses have relocated to the
suburbs. Most neighborhoods are either exclusively white or totally black;
integration sadly does not appear to be on the social agenda in the city
that saw the first successful mass civil rights activity in 1955-56.
