History
Humans inhabited the delta region at least as far back as 5,000 years ago. During the Mississippian period, people of the Pensacola culture built earthen mounds along Bottle Creek and the Tensaw River. During the late prehistoric period, other peoples moved into the area, including the Taensas(Tensaw), the Creek, and the Choctaw. In the 16th century, the area was visited by Spanish forces. French explorers arrived in the last years of the 17th century, eventually settling colonial Mobile in 1702 at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff on the Mobile River. During the Creek War, Red Stick Creeks attacked Fort Mims near the confluence of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers in August 1813, where they killed most of the mixed-blood Tensaw and Lower Town Creeks, intermarried whites, slaves, and nearly 275 militia.
The last important battle of the American Civil War took place at the fortified town of Blakeley, located on the edge of the delta.
In the mid-1920s, the Causeway was built across the lowest part of the delta, connecting the western and eastern shores of Mobile Bay. Later, I-65, I-10 and a railway line were constructed to span different parts of the area.
The delta was designated a National Natural Landmark in May 1974.
Read more about this topic: Mobile-Tensaw River Delta
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)