November 15, 1894

Nineteen adults and nine children moved to Fairhope to start a model community based on the ideas of Iowan populist E.B. Gaston. Believing that land should be common property, Gaston envisioned raising all government revenue from a single tax on the value of land leased to its members. The members named the community Fairhope after a remark that they had a “fair hope” of succeeding and soon became known as the Single Tax Colony. The colony grew to a population of more than 100 by 1900 but failed to secure enough land or members to sustain themselves indefinitely.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Ernest Berry Gaston, a journalist and Populist from Iowa, founded the Fairhope Single-Tax Colony in Lower Alabama as a utopian communal village. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Fairhope Historical Museum)

The 1920s were the height of growth in the Fairhope colony. Numerous visitors came by ship and train to experience the social experiment. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of University of South Alabama Archives)

Plagued by debt and other problems, the Single Tax Colony officially incorporated as a town in 1908. The colony operated under one form of government and the town operated under a mayor-council government. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Fairhope Historical Museum)

A $2.9 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association will pay for a study by the University of South Alabama researchers to assess the environmental health of Mobile Bay by looking at three species. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Fairhope Art Festival in Fairhope, 2010. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.