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Montgomery
Capital of Alabama, on the Alabama River
Montgomery sits on a bend of the Alabama River in the rolling country of the state's central Black Belt, the band of dark, fertile soil that runs across the middle of Alabama. Chosen as the state capital in 1846, the city grew at the head of riverboat navigation, where cotton from the surrounding plantations was loaded for the trip downriver to Mobile and the Gulf.
The river and the railroads made Montgomery a commercial hub of the Deep South, and its central location keeps state government and a busy regional economy anchored here. The land around it is gently rolling and low — the city sits barely 220 feet above sea level — giving way to pine woods and farmland in every direction. It remains the political heart of Alabama and one of the touchstones of American civil-rights history.