Where Alabama's reefs began
The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources says the state has the largest artificial reef program in the country, and Orange Beach is where it started. The natural bottom off this coast is mostly flat sand that holds few fish worth catching. In 1953 the Orange Beach Charter Boat Association asked for permission to sink 250 car bodies off Baldwin County. The state calls that first drop very successful, and the idea spread.
Over the years crews added culverts, bridge rubble, barges, boats and planes. In 1974 and 1975, retired liberty ships went down at five sites off Mobile and Baldwin counties in 80 to 93 feet of water. In 1994 the state sank 100 obsolete army tanks in 70 to 110 feet. A reef works by stacking life: sponges and corals cover the material, small animals settle in, bait fish follow, and the bigger fish come to feed.
The reef zones have grown with the fleet. A 1987 permit set aside almost 800 square miles offshore for reef building, and a 1997 expansion brought the combined permit zones to about 1,260 square miles. That built bottom, not the sand around it, is where snapper and grouper gather.
The rules matter on every trip. In 2026 Alabama opened red snapper to private anglers on May 22, seven days a week until the quota is met, with a limit of two fish per person per day at 16 inches. Federally permitted charter boats fished from June 1 to October 26. Every red snapper landed must be reported through Snapper Check before it leaves the boat.
From orange groves to a charter fleet
The name is literal. Settlers arrived in the mid 1860s and worked turpentine and a shingle mill until the forests ran thin. Orange groves replaced the timber, the first planted by Lemuel Walker Sr., whose home held the first post office in 1901. Hard freezes, the last in 1926, ended the citrus trade.
Fishing filled the gap. In the early 1920s locals began renting out their boats for day trips, at about the same time the first tourist hotel opened. The first paved road arrived in 1947 and electricity in 1948. The city describes a sleepy fishing village until tourism picked up in the 1960s and 1970s, and growth after Hurricane Frederic pushed residents to incorporate on August 1, 1984.
