World Country Guide

General Information

Note:
Alabama means ‘tribal town’ in the Creek Indian language.

Nickname
The Heart of Dixie

State bird
Yellowhammer (Flicker)

State flower
Camellia

Capital
Montgomery

Date of admission to the Union
December 14 1819

Population
4,530,182 (official estimate 2004)

Population density
33.4 per sq km

2003 total overseas arrivals/US ranking
72,000/29

Time
Central (GMT - 6). Daylight Saving Time is observed.

The State
Alabama offers mountains, lakes, caverns, woodland and beaches. Birmingham is its largest city. Attractions include the VisionLand theme park and McWane Center (a hands-on science adventure) and IMAX theatre; the Birmingham Museum of Art; and the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame (ASHOF), founded in 1967 and dedicated to sporting legends such as Jesse Owens and Joe Louis.
Montgomery was the first capital of the Confederacy, and the First White House of the Confederacy, home to Jefferson Davis, first President of the provisional government, is still open to the public. Country music lovers from across the USA make pilgrimages to the Hank Williams Memorial in the Oakwood Cemetery Annex. Fans lay flowers next to the huge cowboy hat that lies on his gravestone. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the fifth-largest Shakespeare festival in the world, attracts around 170,000 visitors every year between August and November, and is staged at the Carolyn Blount Theatre. Some 200 years of American art is covered in the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. Alabama played a key role in the American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr first preached at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery, a National Historic Landmark, and sites commemorating the struggle can be found across the State. These include the statues in Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park, the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma, and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery. In Birmingham, visitors can go on the Black Heritage Tour of the city centre and visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) with its impressive display of African-American history. Tuskegee is just an hour’s drive from Montgomery. A former slave, Booker T Washington, founded the Tuskegee Institute to improve educational opportunities for blacks. Today, visitors can take guided tours of the thriving university and a restored version of Washington’s home, another National Historic Landmark.
Mobile is a major seaport, home to the Mobile Museum of Art and a lively Family Mardi Gras celebration (Jan 21-Feb 8 2005); carnival costumes are on display in the Museum of Mobile. The city is famed for its diverse architecture resulting from English, French and Spanish rule, notably in the Church Street Historic District. For children, there is the Gulf Coast Exploreum and the Phoenix Fire Museum, which includes antique fire engines. Other Alabama tourist destinations and attractions include the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville; the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail; the Russell Cave National Monument in Bridgeport; and the resort towns of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach.