Gulf Shores

The barrier strip that holds Gulf Shores was little more than sand, scrub and a few fishing camps for most of its history. The Spanish and French charted the mouth of Mobile Bay to the west, and the United States built Fort Morgan on its tip in the 1830s to control the channel; in August 1864 Admiral Farragut's fleet forced its way past the fort's guns in the Battle of Mobile Bay, the action remembered for his perhaps apocryphal order to damn the torpedoes. The beach itself stayed almost empty into the 20th century.

The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, cut behind the shore, turned the beach into an island reached by bridge. Gulf State Park, its cabins built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, opened in 1939, and for a generation Gulf Shores was a quiet place of beach houses, a fishing pier and a small summer trade from Alabama and the states to the north.

Hurricane Frederic in 1979 levelled most of that town; FEMA bought damaged oceanfront lots and turned them into a public beach, and the rebuilding that followed produced the condominium resort of today. Hurricane Ivan in 2004 devastated the state park and destroyed its lodge, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 brought oil ashore on nearby beaches and a year of lost tourism; the first Hangout Music Festival opened on the beach that May, just after the spill began. Since then the town has grown quickly, gained a new pier and park lodge, and come to depend on tourism above all.

Gulf Shores is a beach town first. Life runs on the tides and the seasons: families in summer, students in March, retirees in winter and anglers all year. Sport fishing is close to a religion along this coast — charter boats run out from the passes and the bays for red snapper, grouper and king mackerel, and the pier at the state park fills with rod-holders at dawn. The National Shrimp Festival each October celebrates the boats that still work out of Bon Secour and Bayou La Batre.

The Hangout Music Festival, first held on the public beach in May 2010, brought a younger crowd and national attention, and spring break remains a rite of passage for students across Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. For the rest of the year the town is family-minded and conservative, part of a county that votes and worships like the rest of south Alabama; churches are full on Sunday, high-school football matters, and the University of Alabama and Auburn rivalry divides households.

Loggerhead, green and Kemp's ridley sea turtles nest on the beaches, and the endangered Alabama beach mouse lives among the dunes and sea oats, which are protected; visitors are expected to use the boardwalks. Manners are Southern and informal — strangers say hello, "y'all" is standard, and nobody minds sand on the floor.

About 15,000 people lived in Gulf Shores at the 2020 census, a number that swells many times over in summer, when tens of thousands of visitors fill the condominiums and rental houses. Together with neighbouring Orange Beach the town is the economic engine of Baldwin County's coast, and tourism — rentals, restaurants, charter fishing, construction and the trades that serve them — is the overwhelming employer. Since 2000 the county as a whole has grown faster than almost any other in Alabama.

Permanent residents mostly live away from the beachfront: in subdivisions north of the Intracoastal Waterway, along the canals and the bays, and in Foley and the farm country beyond. Retirees make up a large share, with about a quarter of residents aged 65 or over. Workers in the tourist trade often commute from Foley and the towns inland, where housing is cheaper, and the cost of homes and insurance along the shore is a constant worry.

The rhythm is seasonal rather than daily. Summer Saturdays bring the change-over traffic on Highway 59; autumn is quieter and favoured by locals; winter belongs to the snowbirds and their pot-luck suppers; spring brings the students. Hurricane preparation is part of life from June to November, and beach renourishment, dune protection and the balance between new towers and the character of the town are the issues at council meetings.

The food is Gulf seafood, as fresh as anywhere on the coast. Gulf shrimp are the local pride, served fried, boiled, grilled or in po' boys. Oysters from Mobile Bay and the nearby Gulf are served raw, chargrilled or fried; crab claws are fried as a bar snack; and the catch of charter boats — red snapper, grouper, triggerfish, mahi-mahi — turns up blackened, grilled or in tacos at restaurants that will cook what a customer has caught.

Seafood houses line Highway 59 and the beach road, many of them large, family-oriented places with outdoor decks and live music. The fishing village of Bon Secour to the north, founded by French settlers in the 1700s, has long lived from shrimping, and the National Shrimp Festival in October brings the whole catch to the beach. Away from the water, the cooking is south Alabama's: fried chicken, barbecue, biscuits, grits and sweet tea, with produce from the farms of Baldwin County.

Mornings belong to the pancake houses and doughnut shops that serve the rental crowd; evenings to the open-air bars with frozen drinks and the Hangout's beachfront stages.