Apollo 11 launched Huntsville in unexpected orbits

Where would Rocket City be today without, well, rockets?

In addition to being a city in search of a new nickname, Huntsville would not be an economic pillar of Alabama if it were not for the success of the Apollo 11 lunar mission.

So maybe one celebration, in turn, inspires another.

While the United States acknowledged that the first landing on a moon in 1969 was a special moment in the country's history, the race for the moon in the 1960s propelled Huntsville into a prosperous status. another world, which – decades later – is still on the road to success, like Apollo. 11 mission itself.

"I think the Apollo 11 mission and all the Apollo missions have been a stepping stone to the future," said Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle.

The story can be told in different ways about Huntsville's leading role in building the Saturn V rocket that brought the first astronauts to the moon.

But perhaps these are the numbers that say the best.

The Marshall Space Flight Center was founded in Huntsville in 1960, while the United States sought not only to compete with the Soviet Union's early successes in space, but also to outperform the Russians in what was now calls the race to space.

At that time, Huntsville had a population of 72,365, according to the US Census. This made it the fourth largest city in Alabama, even though it was only a fourth far away. The third state city, Montgomery, had about twice as many inhabitants as Huntsville. Tuscaloosa, the fifth largest city in the world, had only 9,000 inhabitants behind Huntsville.

Almost 60 years later, Huntsville is only the third largest city in the state, but is expected to become the largest city in six years.

With an estimated population of more than 197,000 in 2018, Huntsville has grown by 173% since 1960. In the same period, the population of Birmingham decreased by 38% and that of Mobile by nearly 7%. Although Montgomery has experienced a 50% population growth since 1960, it has only 900 more people than Huntsville.

"When the space boom hit Huntsville, he appeared at one point:" Are we going to keep what we have or are we going to look for the unknown? Said Donna Castellano, Executive Director of the Huntsville Historic Foundation. "It's a very scary thing to do for people and they left for the unknown."

For example, Castellano cited the Madison County Courthouse – which opened in 1967. The nine-storey building – with its distinctive 1960s design – replaced the traditional courthouse, so often seen today in the state.

This new courthouse, itself too small, received rave reviews at the time for its architectural design and was presented as "the courthouse that this space has built".

"If it involved demolishing some buildings that were familiar to them in order to accommodate the elements needed to build a new Huntsville, they did," Castellano said. "It was a necessary choice. And when they knew, they did better and we must give them credit.

"I do not know that many cities have this opportunity, they had something that no one else had, namely von Braun."

Of course, Wernher von Braun is synonymous with Huntsville's space heritage. He settled in northern Alabama after the Second World War, brought his team of German scientists to Alabama and guided NASA to the moon landing.

But Huntsville has always been a leader long before von Braun. Huntsville was the first incorporated city in Alabama, founded in 1805, and became the first state capital. The state constitution was written for the first time in Huntsville.

And after the end of the Civil War in 1865, Huntsville sought to become more than a cotton producing community and the city became a leader in the textile mill industry.

"The people who founded this city had money," Castellano said. "They had the culture, they wanted to be better, I think when we look at Huntsville after the civil war and the city was languishing, there were people who said we were going to get some of that money out of there. textile industry, no reason why we have to stay here and grow cotton and we can not turn it into cloth.

"There have always been people in Huntsville who are very sensitive to the opportunities that we have had and have been trying to take advantage of them, and they were ready to reorganize the city to make it happen."

This adaptability is also perceptible today as a city heavily dependent on the federal government because of Redstone Arsenal has extended its economy to manufacturing, as is evident from the $ 1.6 billion automotive plant under construction. Mazda Toyota Manufacturing USA.

Even the textile mills of more than 100 years ago found a new life in Huntsville. Lowe Mill is a thriving arts center, while Lincoln Mill has become an office complex.

Essentially, Huntsville remains a high-tech community with deep roots in the 1960s Space Race. The Marshall Space Flight Center currently has approximately 6,000 employees and contractors. The US center Space & Rocket Center, located right next to the gates of Redstone Arsenal, remains the main tourist attraction of the state.

And Cummings Research Park in Huntsville is the second largest research park in the country.

"We used this as a springboard to make an offer in the computer, we used it to get into detection and cyber-work," Battle said of the success of Apollo 11. "We used it as a stepping stone to enter the aeronautics. All of the disciplines present alongside NASA are disciplines that you find today in our industries and are spread across Research Park – the second largest research park in America. We have more engineering degrees per capita than anywhere else in the United States. Everything came from our work with Apollo. "

We are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 with stories throughout the month of July. You can find the complete collection of stories, written by AL.com and other staff, here: Apollo 11 Anniversary.