Mobile

Long before New Orleans held its first parade, masked societies were already marching through the streets of Mobile – the city claims the oldest Mardi Gras in the U.S. A trip to Mobile takes you to Alabama's Gulf Coast, with oak-lined avenues, Creole houses, a major port, and a battleship you can explore from the inside.

French, Spanish, British, American

Mobile was founded by the French in 1702 and was for a time the capital of the colony of Louisiana. The city then changed hands several times between the British, the Spanish, and the Americans. During the Civil War, the bay was the scene of the Battle of Mobile Bay, in which Admiral Farragut is said to have given the famous order "Damn the torpedoes!" A sad chapter is the story of the ship Clotilda, which illegally brought the last enslaved Africans to the U.S. in 1860; their descendants founded the settlement of Africatown, whose history is told today at the Africatown Heritage House, where artifacts from the wreck are also on display.

Sights in Mobile

At Battleship Memorial Park you'll find the USS Alabama, a World War II battleship, along with a submarine and numerous aircraft. The Mobile Carnival Museum displays the splendid costumes, crowns, and trains of the carnival queens. In the historic district around Bienville Square and Dauphin Street, houses with wrought-iron balconies recall the French Quarter. The Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception and Fort Condé, a partial reconstruction of the French fortress, are reminders of the colonial era. The Bellingrath Gardens south of the city are especially worth seeing in spring, when the azaleas bloom. The GulfQuest National Maritime Museum at the harbor is devoted to seafaring in the Gulf of Mexico.

Eating and Going Out in Mobile

The cuisine blends the Deep South, Creole traditions, and the sea: gumbo, fried shrimp, West Indies salad made with crabmeat and onions, which was invented here, and fresh oysters. In summer, Mobile Bay can experience a "Jubilee," a rare natural phenomenon in which crabs and fish crowd onto the shore in huge numbers. Dauphin Street is the nightlife strip, with bars, live music venues, and restaurants. In the weeks before Ash Wednesday, dozens of parades roll through downtown, and from the floats, along with strings of beads, come MoonPies.

Neighborhoods and Architecture in Mobile

The Oakleigh Garden District offers pre-Civil War mansions beneath avenues of oaks, including the 1833 Oakleigh mansion, which houses a museum. Government Street is lined with more historic houses, and De Tonti Square in the north of downtown preserves townhouses with wrought-iron galleries. Midtown has cafés and small shops. A side trip leads to Africatown, north of the center, where memorials and guided tours tell the story of the Clotilda and its descendants.

Getting Around Mobile and the Best Time to Visit

Passenger air traffic is gradually being moved from Mobile Regional Airport in the west to the new Mobile International Airport on the Brookley site near downtown. Buses run within the city, but for excursions a car is handy. The best times to visit are late winter and spring, with Carnival and the azalea bloom, as well as fall; summers are muggy, and hurricane season runs from June to November. Excursions lead to Dauphin Island, the beaches of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, and the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, one of the most biodiverse river deltas in North America.