Huntsville, Alabama

City with a population of 176,645 in 2006, the fourth largest city in Alabama. County seat of Madison County. First settled by John Hunt, but a failure to register his claim caused the area to be purchased by Leroy Pope, who named the settlement Twickenham, after the home of Alexander Pope, his distant relative. The city became the first incorporated in Alabama in 1811, but was renamed Huntsville during the War of 1812. It was the site of the constitutional convention in 1819 that ratified the Alabama state constitution. Under the constitution, the city served as the provisional state capital for one legislative session in 1819.

The city developed when the first railroad connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico was built through it in 1855. Seized by Union forces in 1862; the Confederacy recaptured the city several months later, but the city was permanently occupied by federal troops in mid-1863. Developed as a center for the textile industry after the Civil War. Expanded after World War Two when the city was chosen as the site of the Redstone Arsenal, which eventually became the center of military missile and NASA rocket development.

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