Bay Minette, AL news and local guide

Bay Minette is best known for how it became the county seat. Baldwin County, created on December 21, 1809, had its seat first at McIntosh Bluff on the Tombigbee River, then at Blakeley from 1810, and later at Daphne; sources differ on whether Daphne gained the seat in 1868 or 1898. On February 5, 1901, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, the state legislature approved moving the seat to Bay Minette, and town leaders dedicated a courthouse there on October 1, 1901, but Daphne refused to give up the county records. According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, Bay Minette men lured the sheriff and his deputy away with a false report of a murder, then traveled about 30 miles to Daphne, loaded up the records and carried them to the new courthouse. Not everyone tells it that way: a 1956 interview, quoted in a later county history, said there was no raid at all, and that the records were loaded on the evening of October 11, 1901, and driven to Bay Minette the next day. A 1937 mural by Hilton Leech, commissioned for the new post office, commemorates the move. Bay Minette was incorporated as a city in 1907. Timber remained central to its economy, with naval stores and a wood processing plant making turpentine, resin and pine oil, while soybeans, wheat, potatoes, pecans and cattle grew important on surrounding farms in the 1930s and 1940s. The old L&N depot, now an Alabama landmark, appeared in Steven Spielberg's 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Sources Encyclopedia of Alabama: Bay Minette Wikipedia: Bay Minette, Alabama (citing Lewis and Outlaw, Images of America: Baldwin County)