While civilization has progressed along the banks of our treasured waterway, the Mobile River's current has remained much the same, ripping and winding its way down to the Bay. At only 45 miles in length, the Mobile is one of Alabama's shortest rivers. It is also one of its least appreciated, primarily because of its heavy industrialization and attendant environmental issues. Yet besides being of vital economic importance, the Mobile River boasts a long and colorful history. And, if one views it from the right perch at sunrise or sunset - say, from the crest of the Cochran Bridge or an upper floor in one of downtown's skyscrapers - it can be heartbreakingly beautiful, a luminous broad ribbon hedged by concrete wharves, warehouses, heavy cranes, barges, tugboats and ships to the south, and by marsh and forest to the north. The Mobile River is formed approximately 50 miles north of downtown by the confluence of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers. After a short run of about five or six miles, it fingers into a series of tributaries that together form the vast natural wonderland that is the Mobile Delta. Among these secondary rivers are the Tensaw and the Middle. The Mobile proper keeps the westernmost main channel, which snakes south before emptying into Mobile Bay just below the city. Together with its tributaries, the Mobile drains more than 40,000 square miles of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and even a bit of East Tennessee. Its water is deep and dark, mostly brackish, and subject to tidal influences for the entire length. The surrounding woods and swamps are extraordinarily diverse and rich and have inspired excited commentary since Europeans first penetrated the area. One anonymous British map of the 1760s noted "a variety of excellent, and useful woods amongst which are cedar, cypress, every kind of oak, elm, ash and hickory." A dozen years later, the great naturalist William Bartram explored the environs by boat and marveled at the extent of cane, cypress and moss, as well as "very large alligators, basking on the shores." THE PEOPLE AND THE RIVER Human history along the Mobile spans all the cultures and nationalities that have settled in these parts - Native American, European (French, British, Spanish), Anglo-American, African-American and, most recently, Asian. Each has used the river to its own ends and left its own historical legacies. The Mobile Indians were first, of course, and gave their name to the stream and the city that would come to be here. Part of the Choctaw family, they navigated their watery realm in dugout canoes (their name is thought to mean "to skim" or "to paddle"); erected earthen mounds of astonishing proportions; cultivated pumpkins, beans and squash; freely fished and hunted the bounteous wildlife around them; and maintained a sophisticated culture grounded in ritual ceremony. For the Europeans, and later the Americans, the Mobile River was less important for the sustenance that its waters and forests provided than as a wide commercial and military highway. The City of Mobile, relocated from upstream to the river's mouth in 1711, became a vibrant outlet for furs and naval stores in the 18th century and then cotton and timber in the 19th. The city's waterfront was never a decorous place, and early descriptions of it are suffused with the reek of sea salt, rotting fish, mud, tar and vice. Many wharves had commodes over the water, and there seems to have been little attention paid to the most basic maintenance of structures that crowded the western bank. One traveler in the 1840s was especially repulsed by the evident loose morals of the place. "In nearly every single building along the street facing the river," he wrote, "could be found a liquor-shop of one kind or another. In many of these places were played heavy percentage games, like chuck, rondo, craps, and similar institutions, plainly exposed to the public view." Other things were exposed to public view as well, including perhaps one of the most exciting and outrageous collections of humanity on the planet: "gangs of drunken boatmen, sailors and reckless adventurers," not to mention coquettish prostitutes of every hue, all willfully carousing under the very noses of "the imbecile police." DANGER DOCKSIDE Many kinds of vessels have plied the Mobile River, from diminutive French pirogues to modern container ships, whose towering superstructures ghost past downtown office buildings. But surely the most unusual was the Confederate submarine Hunley. This innovative war machine was built in Mobile and first successfully tested off the Theater Street wharf on July 31, 1863. A gaggle of Rebel brass and ordinary citizens stood awestruck that steamy day, as the fearsome "Fish Boat" silently dove under an anchored coal flat midriver and blasted it to smithereens. There have been many disasters along the Mobile, some horrifyingly spectacular. On March 13, 1836, the steamboat Ben Franklin exploded shortly after she had backed away from the wharf. Her side wheels had just completed their second revolution when the forward boiler blew, showering the surrounding water andcrowded riverbank with mangled bodies and debris. And, on Oct. 26, 1890, a fire broke out at a wood shingle plant. The blaze rapidly spread down the west bank, consuming warehouses, wharves, railroad cars, boats and, in an awesome pyrotechnic display, a cottonseed oil tank. As sheets of flame roared skyward and thick black smoke rolled downriver, one local lawyer circulated among the grimy firemen, muttering encouragement and pouring out liquor from a brown jug. Today, on the cusp of a new millennium, with such mishaps a distant memory, all the waterfront talk is of the new cruise ship, a growing container port, and an ambitious naval construction program, not to mention the prospect of a massive bridge south of downtown. Whatever else happens, one thing seems quite certain: The Mobile River will continue to channel this city's destiny for as long as its waters flow. John S. Sledge is the author of "The Pillared City: Greek Revival Mobile." Image information: Above: The Mobile waterfront, 1917. Sailing ships and schooners were common sights on the river well into the 1930s. On shore, behind the timber wharves, sheds and warehouses, stand a row of brick commercial buildings where much of the city's business (and carousing) was conducted. Regrettably, this colorful corridor was obliterated during Urban Renewal in the 1960s. Erik Overbey Collection/USA Archives Below: French Mobile, 1725. The little settlement, dominated by Fort Conde and its "King's Wharf," hugs the marshy riverbank. The shaded area represents a slight bluff, which is roughly the line along which Royal Street runs today. The dip in elevation can be easily appreciated looking eastward along either side of the Battle House. Mobile Public Library For more images and information, see the July 2010 issue of Mobile Bay.