A history of Mobile,
since 1702
Postcards, papers and photographs of Mobile from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗The city is named after the Mobile tribe that the French colonists encountered living around Mobile Bay. Although it is debated by Alabama historians, they may have been descendants of the Native American tribe from the small fortress town, Mabila, in central Alabama. The Mobile tribe became allies with the French colonists and suggested the location for the original town of Mobile and a river fort. The tribe's language was the basis for Mobilian Jargon, a Choctaw-derived lingua franca widely used to facilitate trade among the various Gulf Coast peoples. About seven years after the founding of the French Mobile settlement, the Mobile tribe, along with the Tohomé, gained permission from the colonists to settle near the fort.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Mobile’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
2 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewHotel Bienville, 1900: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Mobile, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Hotel Bienville (1900) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom the Library of Congress (6). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.