The story
Blakeley was, for a moment, a serious rival to Mobile. Josiah Blakeley, a Connecticut adventurer, laid out the town in 1814 on the Tensaw River, and after Alabama became a state in 1819 it boomed — by the early 1820s some 4,000 people lived there, more than in Mobile itself.
The Mobile-Tensaw Delta swamps that surrounded it carried yellow fever and malaria, and repeated epidemics gutted the young city; commerce drained back to Mobile, and by the Civil War only about a hundred people remained. The town's last moment in history was violent: on April 9, 1865 — hours after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox — some 16,000 Union troops overran the Confederate earthworks here in one of the last major battles of the war. Afterward the county seat moved away and Blakeley was abandoned.
The site is now Historic Blakeley State Park, 3,800 acres along the Tensaw. It preserves the town's street traces and cemetery alongside the battlefield, whose Union and Confederate lines are among the best-preserved Civil War earthworks in the country. (The town is spelled Blakeley; the battle is often written Blakely.)
What remains today
Town street traces and cemetery, and extensive Civil War earthworks and battle lines, interpreted across Historic Blakeley State Park.
Questions from the field
- What was the Battle of Blakeley?
- Fought April 9, 1865 — hours after Lee's surrender at Appomattox — it was one of the last major battles of the Civil War, when about 16,000 Union soldiers took the Confederate works around the dying town of Blakeley.
- Why did the town of Blakeley die?
- Repeated yellow fever and malaria epidemics from the surrounding delta swamps gutted the boomtown, commerce returned to Mobile, and after the 1865 battle the county seat moved and Blakeley was abandoned.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Blakeley — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Blakeley's permanent record.
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Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 156073
- — Encyclopedia of Alabama — Historic Blakeley State Park
- — American Battlefield Trust — Battle of Fort Blakeley