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Mobile (city, Alabama) is a city in southwestern Alabama. Mobile is the seat of Mobile County and serves as a port of entry on Mobile Bay at the mouth of the Mobile River. It is Alabama's only seaport, and one of the busiest in the United States; a deepwater channel in Mobile Bay links the city with the Gulf of Mexico and the Intracoastal Waterway. Major local manufactures include paper, ships, chemicals, forest products, textiles, processed food, aerospace equipment, and refined petroleum. The area is served by the Mobile Regional Airport.
Mobile retains an old Southern and French flavor, and it is known for its gardens and old houses, many of which are decorated with elaborate wrought-iron work. Spring Hill College (1830), a technical college, the University of Mobile (1961), the University of South Alabama (1963), and a community college are based in the city. Tourist attractions include Fort Condé, a partially reconstructed fort built by the French in 1711; the Romanesque Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception; the Museum of the City of Mobile; and the battleship USS Alabama, which is anchored in the harbor. Popular annual events are the Mardi Gras celebration and the Azalea Trail Festival.
European settlement of the area began when a French colony was established by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, near the present site of Mobile in 1702. It was relocated to the site of the present city in 1711 after a flood, and served as the capital of French Louisiana until 1719. The settlement passed to Great Britain in 1763 and was taken by the Spanish in 1780. The United States seized the city in 1813, during the War of 1812. Mobile was chartered as a town in 1814, and incorporated as a city in 1819.
The port remained open to Confederate use from the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861 until August 1864, when a Union fleet scored a decisive naval victory in the Battle of Mobile Bay. Union troops eventually captured the city in April 1865. Mobile's downtown business center enjoyed a redevelopment boom after the 1984 completion of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, which links north Mississippi's Tennessee River with the Tombigbee River in Alabama and provides shipping access to the South's interior. The city's name is derived from the French version of the name of the Mobilian Native Americans who lived in the region in the early 18th century.
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