Alabama Real Estate & Relocation Guide

Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Population: 77,906

Located in Tuscaloosa County

The City of Tuscaloosa is located in West Alabama on the Black Warrior River, 57 miles southwest of Birmingham. Tuscaloosa is the county seat of 1,340 square mile Tuscaloosa County, which also includes the municipalities of Northport and Brookwood. The City's 77,906 inhabitants (2000) represent over half of Tuscaloosa County's 164,875 population. The home of the University of Alabama, Stillman College, Shelton State Community College, and several large hospitals, Tuscaloosa looms large in the educational and institutional infrastructure of Alabama. Its diversified industrial base is anchored by the 1,900 employee Mercedes-Benz M-Class SUV assembly plant which commenced production in 1997. The plant had already undergone two 40 million expansion when, in August 2000, Mercedes-Benz announced a $600 million project to double the plant's size and production capacity by the year 2004, employing an additional 2,000 workers. When the expansion is completed, the plant will have a capacity of approximately 160,000 units per year.

The site of the future City of Tuscaloosa on the "Fall Line" of the Black Warrior River had long been well known to the various Indian tribes whose shifting fortunes brought them to West Alabama. The river shoals at Tuscaloosa represented the southernmost site on the river which could be forded under most conditions. Inevitably, a network of Indian trails converged upon the place, the same network which, in the first years of the 19th Century began to lead a few intrepid white frontiersmen to the area. The pace of white settlement increased greatly after the War of 1812, and a small assortment of log cabins soon arose near the large Creek Indian village at the Fall Line of the river. In honor of the legendary "Black Warrior", a great chief who had had a fateful encounter with explorer Hernando DeSoto centuries before somewhere in Southwest Alabama, the settlers named the place Tuscaloosa (from the Choctaw words "tushka" meaning warrior and "lusa" meaning black). In 1817, Alabama became a territory, and on December 13, 1819, the territorial legislature incorporated the town of Tuscaloosa, exactly one day before Congress admitted Alabama to the Union as a state. Thus, the City of Tuscaloosa is one day older than the State of Alabama.

From 1826 to 1846 Tuscaloosa was the state capital of Alabama. During this period, in 1831, the University of Alabama was established. These developments, together with the region's growing economy, raised the number of the town's inhabitants to 4,250 by 1845, but after the departure of the capital to Montgomery, population fell to 1,950 in 1850. Establishment of the Bryce State Hospital for the Insane in Tuscaloosa in the 1850's helped restore the City's fortunes. During the Civil War, Tuscaloosa County furnished about 3,500 men to the Confederate armies. During the last weeks of the War, a Federal raiding party burned the campus of the University. Tuscaloosa shared fully in the South's economic sufferings which followed the defeat.

The construction of a system of locks and dams on the Black Warrior River by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1890's opened up an inexpensive link to the Gulf seaport of Mobile, stimulating especially the mining and metallurgical industries of the region. By the advent of the 20th Century, the growth of the University of Alabama and a strong national economy fueled a steady growth in Tuscaloosa which continued unabated for 100 years. The presence in Tuscaloosa of manufacturing plants of such large multi-national firms as Michelin Tires, JVC America, and Chrysler-Mercedes have established the City as an economic pillar of the global economy.

Courtesy of the City of Tuscaloosa