Montgomery, the Capital City of Alabama: Her Resources and Advantages

Montgomery is the capital of Alabama, a State whose area is more than fifty thousand square miles, and whose population is nearly or quite one million and a half. She is near the geographical center of the State, exactly in the center of the three great sources of wealth that are giving such an impetus to Alabama’s development, and has such close connection with every part of the State that, leaving her depot in the morning, every station on Alabama’s nearly 3,000 miles of railroad may be reached before night. When it is added that the Alabama river, navigable all the year round, connects her with the Gulf of Mexico, it will be seen that her facilities as a trade and business center leave little to be desired.

No city is more completely equipped with all the conveniences that make the modern city than Montgomery. Her water works supply her with 5,000,000 gallons of pure artesian water daily. Her streets are lighted by the Brush electric light, and her dwellings and business houses by the incandescent electric light and gas. She has a complete system of street railway, and is just completing a thorough system of sanitary sewerage. That such a city should have good hotels, churches, free public schools, theatres, telephones, etc., etc., goes without the saying.

The year 1865 saw Montgomery an utterly exhausted little town of some six thousand people, with three broken-down railroads.

The year 1888 finds her a city of 30,000 people, with six well-equipped railroads. Her sole resource was trade with the cotton planters of the surrounding country, and such enterprise as men might exhibit who started life over without a dollar. This difference between 1865 and 1888 is stated to show the discerning reader that there is a source of wealth here, and that the people have utilized it as fast as they could accumulate capital to develop it.

Unaided by the influx of capital and enterprise from the East and from Europe, that has so rapidly built other sections of the country, she accomplished so much. What could be done with that aid need not be written to be appreciated. Both enterprise and capital are turning to the South now, and both have found Alabama their best field of operation. It is the purpose of this little pamphlet to show that Montgomery is the place of places for the enterprise that seeks a field for development, for the capital that seeks investment, and for the citizen of a more northern latitude who desires a change of residence to a prosperous city in a more genial clime.