MONTGOMERY, the capital city of Alabama, U.S.A., and the county seat of Montgomery county; at the head of navigation on the Alabama river, S.E. of the centre of the State. It is on Federal highways 31, 231 and 8o; and is served by the Atlantic Coast Line, the Central of Georgia, the Louisville and Nashville, the Mobile and Ohio, the Seaboard Air Line and the Western of Alabama railways. Pop. (1920) (46% negroes) and 66,079 in 193o (Federal census). The city occupies an undulating site, around a sharp bend in the river, in the midst of rich farm lands.
The capitol stands on an eminence at the head of the main business street, which (tradition says) was reserved for the purpose from 1819, though Montgomery did not become the capital until The high-domed central portion (erected 1851) of the present building is one of the finest examples of the classical Georgian architecture in America, and its rotunda was decorated in 1928 by Roderick D. MacKenzie with scenes from the history of the State. Here on Jan. 7, 1861, Alabama voted to secede from the Union; on Feb. 4 the Confederate States of America was organ ized by delegates from six States ; and on the steps of the portico Jefferson Davis took his oath of office. The house occupied by Mr. Davis ("the first White House of the Confederacy") has been moved from its original site to grounds south of the capitol and is used as a museum. At the south-eastern edge of the city is the 62 ac. campus of the Woman's College of Alabama (Methodist Episcopal; 1909), and the State Normal school for negroes is located here. Maxwell field, 1.5 m. outside the city, is a station of the Army Air Corps. The city's assessed valuation of property for 1927 was $37,984,797. It has a commission form of govern
ment. Its morning paper, the Advertiser, has been published con tinuously since 1828.
Montgomery is an important concentration point and a market for cotton, mules, yellow pine and hardwood lumber; has a large jobbing and wholesale business; and is one of the principal cen tres in the country for the manufacture of commercial fertilizer. It has large railroad shops, and various other manufacturing in dustries, with an aggregate output in 1925 valued at $16,162,380. The hydro-electric developments on the Coosa and the Tallapoosa rivers are within 4o miles. Debits to individual accounts in the city's banks totalled $287,620,000 in 1926. The State fair is held here annually.
In Sept. 1540, De Soto spent a week at the Indian village of Towassi, within the present limits of Montgomery, to let his horses fatten on the green grass along the Alabama river, and a later village, Econchati, was visited by de Bienville and was a British headquarters in 1778. In 1817 Samuel Dexter of Massa chusetts and Gen. John Scott of Georgia laid out towns called New Philadelphia and East Alabama, which (together with a third settlement, Alabama Town) were consolidated in 1819 under the present name, in honour of Gen. Richard Montgomery, and incorporated by the legislature sitting at Cahaba. The town was chartered as a city in 1837, became the State capital in 1847, and was the first capital of the Confederacy (until May, 1861) and the seat of Confederate military factories. On April 12, 1865, it was captured by Federal troops.