MOBILE, ALABAMA - The Port City Postcard

Mobile is the third most populous city in the U.S. state of Alabama, the county seat of Mobile County, and Alabama's only salt water port. It is located at the head of Mobile Bay and the north-central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest municipality on the Gulf Coast between New Orleans, Louisiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida. Mobile is the principal municipality of the Mobile Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 412,992 residents which is composed solely of Mobile County and is the third largest metropolitan statistical area in the state. Mobile is largest city in the Mobile-Daphne–Fairhope CSA, with a total population of 591,599, the second largest in the state. Mobile began as the first capital of colonial French Louisiana in 1702. The city gained its name from the Native American Mobilian tribe that the French colonists found in the area of Mobile Bay. During its first 100 years, Mobile was a colony for France, then Britain, and lastly Spain. Mobile first became a part of the United States of America in 1810, with the annexation of West Florida under President James Madison. It then left that union in 1861 when Alabama joined the Confederate States of America, which collapsed in 1865.