We are collecting memories!
Facts are important. What you remember can help us piece together missing parts of the past.
But memories matter too! How you remember things tells us a lot about the values and priorities of our society and how those change over time. The memories we share both reflect and contribute to our collective memory and change how our history is written. We can't tell the full story without acknowledging a wide variety of perspectives. We encourage everyone to look through your family photos, letters and share your memories.
Launching in 2024, this site will host a digital collection of memories from the community. We are hoping you will share brief summaries of people, places and events from Mobile's past as well as photographs which might be shared publicly in a digital format on this site. Words and images will be restricted from redistribution unless otherwise specified.
Memories and images will be focused around a specific place or event each month. You can help us formulate our calendar with suggestions for the most important topics to be covered in the first year.
One of our first topics will be the history of Bay Shell Road. Here is one shared memory.
Send your memories or photos of any significant place or event in Mobile's history to: MobileHistoryProject@gmail.com
When I was a child (1930s) we knew this as “Bay Front Road”. Farther south along our west side of “the Bay” was Fosters’ Place, a great place for swimming and eating, and over the Dog River Bridge was Grand View Park, another great place for swimming at the end of the end of the long pier into the Bay. A side note: at Fosters’, to go out on the pier to use the “bath houses” there was a 10-cent per person charge. We found an empty “room” in one of the bath houses where we left our clothes and other belongings after we had changed into our bathing suits. There were no locks on the doors when we left our belongings and walked out to the end of the pier to get in the waters to swim. And no concerns about our
belongings when others came along after us opening doors to see if a room or cubicle was available for them. It was a “different time” we will never get back to. Sadly.
Lily Olsen
Rachel Ricks
Drugstores in Mobile
The first drugstore I can remember was Dauphin Island Parkway Pharmacy. It was located at Tampa Drive and Dauphin Island Parkway. I remember, the pharmacy had free delivery. It had a place where you could eat and a magazine section. We used to purchase comic books at this drugstore. -- Paulette Horton