The fort at the mouth of the bay
Mobile Point has been fortified for more than two centuries. The U.S. Army built Fort Bowyer here in 1813, a small log and sand work meant to keep the British out of Mobile Bay. In September 1814 it beat back four British warships and a landing force, sinking HMS Hermes. A second, much larger British attack in February 1815 forced the outnumbered garrison to surrender, and the treaty that ended the War of 1812 handed the fort back.
Work on Fort Morgan began in 1819, but the site was so remote that it was not finished until 1834. The Alabama Historical Commission notes that skilled masons, many of them enslaved African Americans, laid its brick walls. The fort saw service in the Civil War, the Spanish American War and both World Wars.
Its most famous day was August 5, 1864. Union Admiral David Farragut drove his fleet past the fort into a bay sown with mines, the torpedoes of the day, with the order history remembers as damn the torpedoes. Cut off inside the Union held bay, the fort held out until August 23, 1864.
Today the Alabama Historical Commission runs the site, with a museum, a gift shop and the fort itself open to walk. The Mobile Bay Ferry leaves from a landing next door and crosses to Dauphin Island and Fort Gaines, the fort that once covered the other side of the channel.
A stopover for tired birds
The fort sits at the last patch of woods before open water, and that makes it what Alabama Birding Trails calls a classic migrant trap. When spring storms push north across the Gulf, exhausted songbirds can drop out of the sky here in spectacular fallouts. In fall, hundreds of hawks pass west over the fort, and winter brings waterbirds and sparrows.
The best spot is the wooded area called the Stables, just inside the entrance. The Hummer/Bird Study Group keeps a banding station there each April and October and welcomes visitors. Licensed banders catch migrants, weigh and measure them, fit a band and let them go, and visitors can watch for free; the historic site charges its own entry and parking fee.
