A Brief History of Huntsville Alabama

Huntsville is named after John Hunt, the first settler of the land around the Big Spring. However, Hunt did not properly register his claim, and the area was purchased by Leroy Pope, who originally imposed the name Twickenham on the area. Twickenham was carefully planned, with streets laid out on the northeast to southwest direction based on the Big Spring. In 1811, Huntsville became the first incorporated town in Alabama. However, the recognized "birth" year of the city is 1805, the year of John Hunt's arrival.

By 1940, Huntsville was still a small quiet town with a population of only 13,150 inhabitants. This quickly changed at the onset of World War II, when Huntsville was chosen as the location of Redstone Arsenal, with its numerous munitions manufacturing plants. The Arsenal was almost closed in 1949 when it was no longer needed, but it saw new life when General H. N. Toftoy convinced the U. S. Army to choose Huntsville as the location for its missile research program. Huntsville's economy was nearly crippled and growth came to a near standstill in the 1970s following the closure of the Apollo program, but the emergence of the Space Shuttle and the ever-expanding field of missile defense in the 1980s helped give Huntsville a resurgence that continues to this day. The city continues to be the center of rocket-propulsion research in the United States, and is home to large branches of many defense contractors.

Before it was nicknamed "Rocket City", Huntsville was known as "The Watercress Capital of the World", because watercress was harvested in such abundance in the nearby area.

Famous Huntsvillians include baseball players Jose Canseco, Mark McGuire and Jimmy Key, as well as 2004 Olympic Water Polo gold medalist Alex Hice and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.