Daphne River Villa

09/19/2026

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For most of the twentieth century Mobile was a bay city that could not get to its bay.

The public waterfront that existed around 1900, the parks and pavilions and swimming spots along the shore south of downtown, went away piece by piece. The port took some of it. Brookley Field took the rest. By the 1940s the stretch of shoreline where people used to spend Sunday was industrial ground with no way in.

In July 2008 the Mobile City Council voted unanimously on something small and worth noticing. Roughly 20 acres at Arlington Point, out near Brookley, turned into a public waterfront park. A boardwalk, a fishing pier, a launch for kayaks and small boats, restrooms, and a transit stop so people without a car could actually get there. The city developed it alongside the Airport Authority and the State Port Authority.

Arlington Park is open today at 1705 South Broad Street. Walking trail, pavilions, fishing, kayak launch.

Twenty acres is not much next to what was lost. But it is bayfront, it is public, and somebody had to decide to put it back.

09/11/2026

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In 1819 yellow fever came through Mobile and killed 274 people, roughly one in five residents of the town. The burying ground on Church Street opened that year out of pure necessity, and the city finished buying the land in 1820.

It stayed open for burials until 1898. Walk it now and you are walking three separate graveyards that grew together behind one brick wall built in 1830. The Catholic section sits to the northeast, the Protestant section to the southeast, and the west end was set aside for strangers, meaning sailors and travelers who died in Mobile without family to claim them. That was not a small category in a port city.

Joe Cain, the man credited with reviving Mobile's street Mardi Gras after the Civil War, was reinterred here in 1966. His ride is often dated to 1866, though the documented first appearance is 1868. The oak near the graveyard with the famous curse story attached to it is folklore, and a good one, but folklore.

Above ground tombs, cracked stucco, live oaks that were already old when the last burial happened. It is one of the quietest places in downtown Mobile.

09/07/2026

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09/01/2026

Hello September!

08/20/2026