10 Oldest Cities In Alabama

You might think your town is old, but it probably isn’t the oldest in the country.

That is unless you live in St. Augustine, FL. Which looks pretty good for being 454 years old.

That’s older than America for those playing at home.

So that got us thinking, what is the oldest city in Alabama? And how old is that when you put it into perspective of St. Augustine or American Independence in 1776?

Because even if your Alabama city or town is old, it isn’t really all that old in the grand scheme of things. For example, the Pyramids in Egypt were built around 2600 BC, a cool 4100 years before St. Augustine.

And now that we have you thinking about how the time line of your existence is really kind of unimpressive on the timeline of history, let’s drop right into the analysis.

These are the 10 oldest cities and towns in the Heart Of Dixie according to their ‘date of foundation’:

1. Huntsville (Photos)
2. Mobile (Photos)
3. Athens (Photos)
4. Montgomery (Photos)
5. Tuscaloosa (Photos)
6. Russellville (Photos)
7. Tuscumbia (Photos)
8. Decatur (Photos)
9. Florence (Photos)
10. Tallassee (Photos)

For being 207 years old, Huntsville doesn’t look a day over 40. And the newest city in Alabama? That would be Mountain Brook — a brand spanking 76 years old.

Read on for a look at the oldest places in Alabama or feel free to check out the best places to live in Alabama or the safest.

How We Determined When A City Was Founded In Alabama… Or Is It Settled?

Surprisingly, there’s not a definitive data set that contains the dates of incorporation or settlement for cities in America. Put differently, there’s no official data set from the Census that contains when every place in America was founded.

So what did we do instead?

Use the internet’s version of official government data — Wikipedia of course!

For the majority of cities in Alabama, Wikipedia offers data on some kind of ‘date of foundation’ in the infobox. Unfortunately, because it’s Wikipedia and not a sprawling government bureaucracy, that can take the form of any of the following nomenclature (plus others):

• Founded
• Settled
• Incorporated
• Approved
• Chartered

And then even more stuff — for example Atlanta has a ‘Terminus’ date, whatever that is.

If no ‘date of foundation’ was found in the infobox, we looked to the general text in the History section of the city for ‘Founded in XXXX’.

All in all, we were able to collect data on 77 out of 115 in Alabama with over 5,000 people. That’s good for a 67.0% completion rate.

We then ranked them from oldest to newest with Huntsville turning out to be the matriarch of Alabama at the ripe old age of 207.

Here’s a look at the top ten and a snippet of their history from Wikipedia.

1. Huntsville

Population: 190,501
Founded: 1811
Age: 207
The first settlers of the area were Muscogee-speaking people. The Chickasaw traditionally claim to have settled around 1300 after coming east across the Mississippi. A combination of factors, including depopulation due to disease, land disputes between the Choctaw and Cherokee, and pressures from the United States government had largely depopulated the area prior to Revolutionary War veteran John Hunt’s arrival and settlement in the land around the Big Spring in 1805. The 1805 Treaty with the Chickasaws and the Cherokee Treaty of Washington of 1806 ceded native claims to the United States Government. The area was subsequently purchased by LeRoy Pope, who named the area Twickenham after the home village of his distant kinsman Alexander Pope.

Twickenham was carefully planned, with streets laid out on the northeast to southwest direction based on the Big Spring. However, due to anti-British sentiment during this period, the name was changed to ‘Huntsville’ to honor John Hunt, who had been forced to move to other land south of the new city.

2. Mobile

Population: 192,085
Founded: 1814
Age: 204
The European settlement of Mobile began with French colonists, who in 1702 constructed Fort Louis de la Louisiane, at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff on the Mobile River, as the first capital of the French colony of La Louisiane. It was founded by French Canadian brothers Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, to establish control over France’s claims to La Louisiane. Bienville was appointed as royal governor of French Louisiana in 1701. Mobile’s Roman Catholic parish was established on July 20, 1703, by Jean-Baptiste de la Croix de Chevrières de Saint-Vallier, Bishop of Quebec. The parish was the first French Catholic parish established on the Gulf Coast of the United States.

In 1704 the ship Pélican delivered 23 French women to the colony; passengers had contracted yellow fever at a stop in Havana. Though most of the ‘Pélican girls’ recovered, numerous colonists and neighboring Native Americans contracted the disease in turn and many died. This early period was also the occasion of the importation of the first African slaves, transported aboard a French supply ship from the French colony of Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean, where they had first been held. The population of the colony fluctuated over the next few years, growing to 279 persons by 1708, yet descending to 178 persons two years later due to disease.

3. Athens

Population: 24,735
Founded: 1818
Age: 200
Founded in 1818 by John Coffee, Robert Beaty, John D. Carroll, and John Read, Athens is one of the oldest incorporated cities in the State of Alabama, having been incorporated one year prior to the state’s admittance to the Union in 1819. Limestone County was also created by an act of the Alabama Territorial Legislature in 1818. The town was first called Athenson, but was incorporated as Athens after the ancient city in Greece. The town’s first mayor was Samuel Tanner, and the Tanner area, south of Athens, was named on his behalf.

4. Montgomery

Population: 200,761
Founded: 1819
Age: 199
Prior to European colonization, the east bank of the Alabama River was inhabited by the Alibamu tribe of Native Americans. The Alibamu and the Coushatta, who lived on the west side of the river, were descended from the Mississippian culture. This civilization had numerous chiefdoms throughout the Midwest and South along the Mississippi and its tributaries, and had built massive earthwork mounds as part of their society about 950–1250 AD. Its largest location was at Cahokia, in present-day Illinois east of St. Louis.

The historic tribes spoke mutually intelligible Muskogean languages, which were closely related. Present-day Montgomery is built on the site of two Alibamu towns: Ikanatchati (Ekanchattee or Ecunchatty or Econachatee), meaning ‘red earth;’ and Towassa, built on a bluff called Chunnaanaauga Chatty. The first Europeans to travel through central Alabama were Hernando de Soto and his expedition, who in 1540 recorded going through Ikanatchati and camping for one week in Towassa.

5. Tuscaloosa

Population: 97,373
Founded: 1819
Age: 199
Nearly 12,000 years ago, Native Americans or Paleo-Indians arrived in what today is referred to as the Deep South. They were hunter-gatherers who pursued the megafauna that became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age. After thousands of years, successive indigenous cultures developed a rich and complex agricultural society. Archaeologists called these people the Mississippians of the Mississippian culture; they were Mound Builders. Their large earthworks, built for political and religious rituals roughly from 900AD to 1500AD, expressed their cosmology. Their earthwork mounds and great plazas survive throughout the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, as well as their tributaries in the Southeast.

Descendant Native American tribes include the Creek (Muskogee people). Also among the historical tribes living in the area of present-day Alabama at the time of European contact were the Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee in the interior, believed to have migrated south centuries before from the Great Lakes area. The tribes of the coastal plain and Piedmont included the Muskogean-speaking Alabama (Alibamu), Chickasaw, Choctaw, Koasati, and Mobile.

6. Russellville

Population: 9,715
Founded: 1819
Age: 199
After the War of 1812, the U.S. government appropriated money to improve a route from Nashville to New Orleans. It was named Jackson’s Military Road after Andrew Jackson, and it passed through what became Russellville. (Present-day Jackson Avenue and Jackson Highway, U.S. Route 43, follow portions of the original road.)

7. Tuscumbia

Population: 8,452
Founded: 1820
Age: 198
Tuscumbia had its beginnings when the Michael Dixon family arrived about 1816. They traded with Chief Tucumseh for the Tuscumbia Valley and built their home at the head of the big spring. From these humble dwellings quickly developed a village known as the Big Spring Community. The men of the community requested that the state legislature incorporate them as a city. The town was incorporated in 1820 as Ococoposa and is one of Alabama’s oldest towns. In 1821, its name was changed to Big Spring and on December 22, 1822, to Tuscumbia, after the Chief Rainmaker of the Chickasaws.

8. Decatur

Population: 54,844
Founded: 1826
Age: 192
Initially the area was known as ‘Rhodes Ferry Landing’, named for Dr. Henry W. Rhodes, an early landowner who operated a ferry that crossed the Tennessee River in the 1810s at the present-day location of Rhodes Ferry Park. The city was incorporated as Decatur in 1821. It was named in honor of Stephen Decatur; after he was killed in a duel in 1820, President Monroe directed that the Alabama town be named for him.[citation needed]

9. Florence

Population: 39,824
Founded: 1826
Age: 192
Florence was surveyed for the Cypress Land Company in 1818 by Italian surveyor Ferdinand Sannoner, who named it after Florence, the capital of the Tuscany region of Italy. Florence, Alabama was incorporated in 1826.

10. Tallassee

Population: 4,970
Founded: 1835
Age: 183
The historic Creek peoples in this area are believed to have descended from the Mississippian culture, which flourished throughout the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys and the Southeast from about 1000 to 1450. They were mound builders, who created massive earthwork mounds as structures for political and religious purposes. They relied greatly on fishing and riverway trading at their major sites (c.f. Moundville, Tuscaloosa).

Oh How Time Flies For The Oldest Towns And Cities In Alabama

So there you have it, a look at some of the oldest places to live in Alabama. If we missed your city’s ‘date of foundation’, let us know in the comments. Or feel free to take a look at the table of the oldest places in Alabama.

And now, let’s raise our glasses, to the next 100 years of existence for these cities and towns in the Heart Of Dixie.

And for those wondering, here are the newest additions to Alabama:

1. Mountain Brook (Founded in 1942)
2. Gardendale (Founded in 1942)
3. Jacksonville (Founded in 1942)

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Detailed List Of The Oldest Cities In Alabama

City	Rank	Age	Year Founded
Huntsville	1	207	1811
Mobile	2	204	1814
Athens	3	200	1818
Montgomery	4	199	1819
Tuscaloosa	5	199	1819
Russellville	6	199	1819
Tuscumbia	7	198	1820
Decatur	8	192	1826
Florence	9	192	1826
Tallassee	10	183	1835
Hoover	11	168	1850
Ozark	12	148	1870
Birmingham	13	147	1871
Anniston	14	146	1872
Clanton	15	145	1873
Albertville	16	127	1891
Jasper	17	114	1904
Bay Minette	18	114	1904
Childersburg	19	114	1904
Spanish Fort	20	114	1904
Greenville	21	114	1904
Demopolis	22	114	1904
Montevallo	23	114	1904
Smiths Station	24	114	1904
Daleville	25	114	1904
Guntersville	26	114	1904
Helena	27	114	1904
Jackson	28	114	1904
Homewood	29	114	1904
Selma	30	114	1904
Trussville	31	114	1904
Daphne	32	114	1904
Troy	33	113	1905
Southside	34	113	1905
Bessemer	35	113	1905
Arab	36	113	1905
Enterprise	37	113	1905
Opelika	38	113	1905
Alabaster	39	113	1905
Hamilton	40	113	1905
Oneonta	41	113	1905
Tarrant	42	113	1905
Monroeville	43	113	1905
Roanoke	44	113	1905
Chickasaw	45	113	1905
Robertsdale	46	113	1905
Prattville	47	113	1905
Brewton	48	113	1905
Gadsden	49	113	1905
Auburn	50	113	1905
Harvest	51	113	1905
Vestavia Hills	52	113	1905
Fultondale	53	113	1905
Prichard	54	113	1905
Andalusia	55	113	1905
Foley	56	113	1905
Hueytown	57	113	1905
Talladega	58	113	1905
Cullman	59	113	1905
Alexander City	60	113	1905
Hartselle	61	113	1905
Saraland	62	113	1905
Pell City	63	113	1905
Fairhope	64	113	1905
Calera	65	113	1905
Sylacauga	66	113	1905
Eufaula	67	113	1905
Irondale	68	113	1905
Leeds	69	113	1905
Fairfield	70	113	1905
Pleasant Grove	71	113	1905
Oxford	72	113	1905
Boaz	73	113	1905
Tuskegee	74	113	1905
Jacksonville	75	113	1905
Gardendale	76	113	1905
Mountain Brook	77	76	1942