11/1/2002
By David A. Fryxell
It's full speed ahead to the Alabama Gulf Coast, where Civil War history beckons you to leave the beach — if only for an afternoon.
Even in destinations better known from travel brochures than history books, you can find fascinating detours into the past. Here are three historic getaways you can make part of your more conventional vacations to Alabama's Gulf Coast, Hawaii and Maine.
If Adm. David Farragut were steaming into Mobile Bay today instead of in August 1864, he might amend his famous torpedo-defying remark to “Damn the condos, full speed ahead!” Alabama's Gulf Coast, stretching from Mobile to Pensacola, Fla., has changed a bit since Farragut made Civil War history and Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. The Confederate troops defending Fort Morgan, the gateway to Mobile Bay, manned a star-shaped brick bunker barely visible from the water — an oven in the Alabama summer. Today, air-conditioned condos beckon vacationers to frolic in the surf those wool-clad Rebels could only gaze longingly at.
But the rapid development of the Gulf Coast doesn't mean you still can't get a feel for history here. When you need a break from the beach, the past is waiting for you.