Mobile, Alabama. City and Business guide.

Welcome to Mobile, Alabama.

Mobile is a city located in Mobile County, Alabama, US, along the northwest shores of Mobile Bay. As of the 2004 US Census estimate, the city had a population of 203,564. It is the principal city of the Mobile metropolitan statistical area (MSA), which has a population of approximately 400,529.

The city's name is derived from the presence of the Mobile (Mauvile or Maubila) Indians in the area at the time of founding. (See Mobilian.) The city is the county seat of Mobile County. Mobile is home to the second largest, and is the oldest, Mardi Gras celebration in the US (1703), predating New Orleans.[2] Mobile is the only saltwater port in Alabama.

Downtown Mobile skyline.
The settlement, then called by the French name "Fort Louis de la Mobile", was first established in 1702, at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff on the Mobile River, as the first capital of the French colony of Louisiana. Following a series of floods, the town was relocated downriver to its present location near the head of Mobile Bay in 1711 and named Fort Conde. The capital of Louisiana was moved to Biloxi in 1720 and to New Orleans in 1723 and Mobile was relegated to the role of frontier town and trading post.

The Cotton Boom of the early 19th century brought an explosion of commerce to what had been a sleepy frontier town. By the 1850s, Mobile was one of the 4 busiest ports in the US. The wealth created by this trade brought the city to a cultural high point. Mobile became well known throughout the country and the world.

Mobile, as a central Gulf Coast city has a subtropical climate, which consists of mild, wet winters and hot, wet summers. Mobile is also very vulnerable to storm surge from hurricanes, which the area frequently experiences.

Since 1852, the Battle House hotel has been a fixture of the Mobile landscape. Although the original hotel was destroyed in a fire in 1905, it was rebuilt and has remained a Mobile area landmark. It was the location of President Woodrow Wilson's famous speech in 1913 where he declared that the US would never again fight in a foreign war of aggression. In 1974, the hotel went vacant, as much of downtown was doing at the time.

Mobile ranks third on the list of cities that have produced the most members of the Baseball Hall of Fame (Five: Hank Aaron, Billy Williams, Willie McCovey, Satchel Paige, and Ozzie Smith). New York City and Chicago are first and second, respectively.

Among some Mobilians, there is a certain prestige associated with being a native. Those residents consider themselves blessed by the fact that they were "conceived under an Azalea Bush and raised in the shallow waters of Mobile Bay".

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