MONTGOMERY,
THE CAPITAL CITY OF ALABAMA.

HER RESOURCES AND ADVANTAGES.

Issued under the Auspices of the Montgomery Real Estate Agents’ Association, Composed of the following Firms,

1888.
ILLUSTRATED AND PRINTED BY THE SOUTH PUBLISHING COMPANY, 76 PARK PLACE, N. Y.

STATE CAPITOL AND SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT.

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA.

RESIDENCE OF W. B. DAVIDSON

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.

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.

That Montgomery does an annual business of over $30,000,000; that her manufactures are rapidly becoming an important element of her wealth; that she has recently expended millions in improvements, and that she offers the lowest death rate of any city on this continent, is all hereafter set out in detail. She here invites attention to the claim that she offers the best location for purposes of business, commercial or manufacturing, that the developing South affords.

Alabama has three sources of wealth—agricultural, mineral and timber. The Mineral belt lies across the Northern third of the State, and there more than a hundred million of dollars have been expended within the last five years in opening coal and iron deposits that surpass those of Pennsylvania.

The Timber belt lies across the Southern third of the State, and there billions of feet of yellow pine stand untouched in the virgin forest, while a hundred saw mills are humming along the railroads and rivers.

The Agricultural belt lies across the center of the State from East to West. A belt of prairie, fertile as that of Illinois, is separated from the Timber belt on the south and the Mineral belt on the north, by wide stretches of fertile uplands. Along the streams and in the uncleared forests of this central belt are vast quantities of hard woods, suited to every purpose of manufacture.

RESIDENCE OF O. O. NELSON

In the heart of this Agricultural belt, sits Montgomery, with her river and six railroads. She is the commercial emporium of this farming region, while a few miles north or south brings her to the cheap fuel and the cheap lumber of the Mineral and Timber regions of a State more richly endowed in these respects than any State in the American Union.

These rich farming lands, already recovered from the revolution in the labor system, are still to be had for from $3 to $15 per acre, while vast bodies of timber lands are still in the hands of the government, at $1.25 per acre.

Montgomery only asks that the man of enterprise and the man of capital shall come and see for himself. Cheap iron, cheap fuel, cheap cotton, cheap lumber and a consuming population of 500,000 farmers hold out inducements to the manufacturer, unsurpassed on the American continent.

MONTGOMERY AS A HEALTH RESORT.

We have long believed, and are now prepared to show by facts, figures and an experience of twenty-one years in the Health Department of Montgomery, that it is entitled to rank amongst the healthiest cities in America. We make this assertion in no boastful spirit, but with security born of experience, and sustained by the following carefully prepared statistical tables, compiled from data furnished by a number of American and foreign cities: