Alabama Travel Guide

The song Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd, reflects how Alabama citizens feel about their home state.  From the mountains and rolling hills of northern Alabama, to the fertile farmland in the center of the state, to great coastal cities like Mobile, Alabama has a lot to offer visitors.

Alabama's Top Vacation Spots

Birmingham (Civil Rights sites)

Gulf Coast (beautiful beaches)

Huntsville (Space Camp)

Mobile (the bay, outdoor recreation, history)

Montgomery (Shakespeare Festival)

Talladega (NASCAR super speedway events)

The Trent Jones Golf Trail

Alabama History

When the first Spanish explorers arrived, Alabama was settled by the Alibamu, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Koasati, and Mobile tribes.  Despite that, the Spanish, English, and French all claimed parts of it.  In 1763, the French gave up their claim to Mobile.  The Spanish held out till 1795.  Alabama was admitted as a state in 1819.

Through the 1830 Indian Removal Act the remaining Native Americans in Alabama were forced to move west. 

Cotton plantations thrived on Alabama’s soil and on the labor of its large number of African slaves.   In 1860, as the Civil War began, 45% of the state’s population was made up of enslaved Africans.

Montgomery was the first capital of the Confederacy.  Most of the war's fighting took place in northern Alabama (Athens, Decatur, and Day's Gap), in Selma, and around the port of Mobile, but troops from Alabama fought as far away as Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 

In the years after the War,  iron ore and coal were discovered near Birmingham, known as the Pittsburg of the South.  But the rural white minority ruled the state legislature, which resulted in near-slavery for African-Americans through segregation and discriminatory laws.

In the 1960s the fight for Civil Rights moved into Alabama with the Children’s March in Birmingham, the Selma to Montgomery march, and countless other nonviolent protests.