US
Imaging of Mobile offers FREE Pickup & Delivery
for the following services:
Document
Imaging Mobile, Document Imaging Mobile,
AL, Document Imaging Mobile, Alabama, Document
Imaging Mobile Alabama, Document Imaging Services
in Mobile, Document Imaging Services in Mobile,
AL, Document Imaging Outsourcing, Document Imaging
Outsourcing in Mobile, Alabama, Professional Document
Imaging, Professional Document Imaging in Mobile,
Alabama, Personalized Document Imaging, Secure Document
Imaging in Mobile, Al, Safe Document Imaging in
Mobile, Al, Affordable Document Imaging, Affordable
Document Imaging in Mobile, Al, Easy Document Imaging
in Mobile.
A
little about Mobile, Alabama
The settlement was
first established in 1702, at Twenty-seven Mile
Bluff on the Mobile River, as the capital
of the French colony of Louisiana. Following a series
of floods, the town was relocated downriver to its
present location near the head of Mobile
Bay in 1711. The capital of Louisiana was moved
to New Orleans in 1723 and Mobile was relegated
to the role of frontier town and trading post.
Mobile was transferred to
the British in 1763 as a result of the Treaty of
Paris. The immediate British enforcement of race
codes threw the denizens of the French-derived culture
into chaos. The French Creole world was noted for
its laissez-faire attitude to racial matters and
the stringent English codes chased many of Mobile's
Creole residents westward into Louisiana. It also
marked a slight cultural division point between
Mobile and the rest of the French-founded
coast.
The port town was captured by the
Spanish in 1780 during the American Revolutionary
War. The Spanish held Mobile until 1814 when
it was captured by the American General Wilkinson;
by then it was the second largest seaport on the
Gulf Coast.
The Cotton Boom of the early 19th
century brought an explosion of commerce to what
had been a sleepy frontier town. By the 1850s, Mobile
was one of the 4 busiest ports in the country.
In another note of differentiation
between the somewhat cosmopolitan port and the hinterlands
of predominantly Protestant Alabama, Mobile
was declared an archdiocese of the Catholic Church
in this same period. In 1830, the Jesuit Order of
the Catholic Church founded Spring Hill College,
one of the oldest Catholic schools in the country.
One incident of some historical
interest occurred in 1860, when the Clotilde, the
last known ship to arrive in the Americas with a
cargo of slaves, was abandoned by its captain near
Mobile. A number of the slaves escaped and
formed their own community on the banks of the Mobile
River, which became known as Africatown. The inhabitants
of this community retained their African customs
and language well into the 20th century.
Mobile grew substantially
in the period leading up to the American Civil War
when it was heavily fortified and held by the Confederates.
Union naval forces established a blockade under
the command of Admiral David Farragut. Farragut
did not attack Mobile until August 1864.
The ensuing Battle of Mobile Bay was a Union
victory but Mobile held out for another nine
months. During the later federal occupation of Mobile,
in May, 1865, an ammunition depot explosion -- called
the great Mobile magazine explosion -- killed
some 300 people.
After the war, the harbor was substantially
improved and deepened, and ship-building became
a notable industry.
During World War II, the port town
predictably livened up. Industry accelerated with
the increase in ship-building. Workers from outlying
areas moved into Mobile to fill jobs on the
waterfront and many stayed after the war's conclusion.
In the post-War years, the Brookley
Air Base was built in Mobile. The phenomenal
influx of workers from the surrounding rural areas
expanded the population in leaps and bounds. By
1956, Mobile's square mileage had tripled
to accommodate the growth. Brookley's closure in
the mid-1960s sent economic tremors through the
area which took many years to absorb.
In 1964, the University of South
Alabama opened its doors and its tremendous impact
on the community and economy was deeply felt in
a variety of sectors.
Mobile's seafood industry
rose to a position of note for a while, with Mobile
Bay oysters acclaimed far and wide, but this waned
almost to the point of extinction in the last quarter
of the 20th century. A few shrimpers still hang
on in the South Mobile County fishing village
of Bayou La Batre, immortalized in the book and
film Forrest Gump, but their future appears uncertain.
Four members of the Baseball Hall
of Fame were born in Mobile: Hank Aaron,
Willie McCovey, Satchel Paige and Ozzie Smith.
Notable yearly activities that take
place in Mobile include the Senior Bowl,
Mardi Gras (the oldest in the country), the GMAC
Bowl, the Azalea Trail Run, and the Junior Miss
Pageant.
The eastern shore of Mobile
Bay periodically experiences a unique phenomenon
called a Jubilee. A jubilee, which usually takes
place in the wee hours of warm nights, describes
a massive upsurge of sea life from the bottom of
the bay. This phenomenon has also been observed
in a similar bay in Japan and is believed to be
caused by low oxygen levels in the water. This upsurge
to the surface usually consists of crabs, shrimp,
flounder and other sea delicacies. Needless to say,
a jubilee, when first realized, is quickly spread
by word of mouth along the coast, providing an impromptu
fishing party in the middle of the night.
On November 10th 1993 Mobile
formally twinned with the Japanese city of Ichihara,
Chiba prefecture.