Huntsville is a city in Madison County, Limestone County, and Morgan County, Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Madison County.[13] Located in the Appalachian region of northern Alabama, Huntsville is the most populous city in the state.[14][15]
Huntsville was founded within the Mississippi Territory in 1805 and became an incorporated town in 1811. When Alabama was admitted as a state in 1819, Huntsville was designated for a year as the first capital, before that was moved to more central settlements. The city developed across nearby hills north of the Tennessee River, adding textile mills in the late nineteenth century.
Its major growth has taken place since World War II. During the war, the Army established Redstone Arsenal near here with a chemical weapons plant, and nearby related facilities. After the war, additional research was conducted at Redstone Arsenal on rockets, followed by adaptations for space exploration. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command, and most recently the FBI's operational support headquarters all came to be located at nearby Redstone Arsenal.[16] The National Trust for Historic Preservation included Huntsville in its "America's Dozen Distinctive Destinations for 2010" list.[17]
The city's population was 215,006 at the 2020 census,[10] making it Alabama's most populous city.[18] Huntsville is the largest city in the five-county Huntsville-Decatur-Albertville, AL Combined Statistical Area.[19] The Huntsville metropolitan area's population was 491,723 in 2020,[12] making it the second most populous metropolitan area in the state after the Birmingham metropolitan area.
Together with settlement pressures after the United States gained independence, this area had become largely empty of indigenous peoples by the turn of the 19th century. Revolutionary War veteran John Hunt was a pioneer in 1805 on land around the Big Spring. The US negotiated an 1805 treaty with the Chickasaw and an 1806 treaty with the Cherokee who ceded their claims to land to the federal government.[20]
The area was subsequently purchased by LeRoy Pope, who named it Twickenham after the home village of his distant kinsman Alexander Pope.[21] Twickenham was carefully planned, with streets laid out in a northeast to southwest direction based on the flow of Big Spring. Given anti-British sentiment during this period after the Revolution and with tensions leading to the War of 1812, in 1811 the town name was changed to "Huntsville" to honor pioneer John Hunt.[22]
Both John Hunt and LeRoy Pope were Freemasons and charter members of Helion Lodge #1, the oldest lodge in Alabama.[23]
In 1811, Huntsville became the first incorporated town in what is now Alabama. However, the recognized "founding" year of the city is 1805, the year of John Hunt's arrival.[24]
David Wade settled in Huntsville in 1817. He built the David Wade House on the north side of what is now Bob Wade Lane (Robert B. Wade was David's grandson), just east of Mt. Lebanon Road. It had six rough Doric columns on the portico.[25]
During the Great Depression, the Wade House was measured as part of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) for preservation of historic buildings in the government's Archive. It was photographed by Frances Benjamin Johnston for the project, which was part of the Roosevelt administration's programs to hire workers during this critical period. The HABS project put architects, draftsmen, and photographers to work to create an inventory of documentation and photographs of significant properties across the country. The Wade house had already been abandoned for years and was considerably deteriorated. It was torn down in 1952. Today only the antebellum smokehouse survives on the property.[26]