Dauphin Island

Wednesday, December 16
Dauphin Island is due south of Mobile, on the west side of the Bay. The road down is lined with industry: oil companies and drilling and all the businesses that support the oil/gas business. In between all this industry, there are pockets of country neighborhoods, with the general store alive and well at any crossroad. We followed the road closest to the -Bay, and again marveled at the fancy houses this far from the city. It seems there are more 'for sale' signs than we remember from a few years ago when we were here. BK. Before Katrina. Of course, Mobile didn't take the hit that MS and LA took. Here, they are still talking about Hurricane Frederick, which hit in 1979.

The road and bridge to Dauphin Island were built in 1955. The bridge was washed away by Frederick, and the year-round residents of DI used a two hour ferry to Fowl River for the two years it took to reconstruct the bridge. That road reminds me of the road to Cedar Island, from Atlantic, NC. An engineering marvel, a road built through the salt march to a tiny piece of dry ground. DI is 14 miles long, I don't know if that includes the far western end that was separated by Frederick. Ancient shell mounds and a fresh water spring in the middle of the island hint at the Native American presence here many years ago. Of course, there is a fort at the eastern tip, a companion to the one across the Bay, to defend the port.

DI is one of the important stopping points for birds travelling north and south during the migration periods: the first or last stop for fresh water and food before the rest of the trp. The Audubon Society set aside 164 acres of woods and swamp in the middle of the island for sanctuary.

 

Birds! There are water birds everywhere! The brown pelican population appears to be healthy here. The sand dunes in the background of the picture are about 5 stories high, and curve around the south and eastern end of the island. Dumb zoning allowed three houses to be built on TOP of the dunes before the people came to their senses...
 













The winter storm in the past couple of weeks has moved much of the sand at the highly developed western end of the strip of sand...we drove past a couple of construction jobs, houses apparently being moved back from the water's edge. The island is less than 1/4 mile wide where the work was begin done. This photo is the sand piles, cleared from the single road to the west end...We learned that just hiring a bulldozer to shove it back into place is not allowed. FEMA says the sand must be SIFTED!! In case there is glass, or other foreign debris. Doesn't seem a reasonable way to spend money to me, either.
 

At the east end of the island, you can just barely see the Sand Island Light house. A google map satellite view of the Bay shows there is a sandbar still visible, but the lighthouse is now a tiny island. The lightkeepers house is many years gone, washed away with the moving island. This is as close as we can get to the lighthouse, without a boat.