Huntsville Information
Huntsville is a city in Madison
County in the U.S. state of Alabama, and the county
seat of Madison County.
Huntsville is the largest city in northern
Alabama in a region of a half-million people, with
the city proper having 171,327 residents (2007 estimate).
Started with a single cabin in 1805,
the city was incorporated six years later as Twickenham.
However, it was renamed "Huntsville" (after first
settler John Hunt) during the War of 1812.
Since then, it has grown across nearby
hills and along the Tennessee River, adding textile
mills, then munitions factories, to become a major
city, hosting the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
and Redstone Arsenal.
Huntsville is the largest core city
of the four-county large Huntsville-Decatur Combined
Statistical Area.
As of the 2000 census, the population
of Huntsville was 158,216. As of 2007, the estimated
population of the Huntsville Metropolitan Area is
386,632, with the city proper having 171,327 residents.
Huntsville and its cross-river neighbor
Decatur combine their separate metro areas to form
the Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistical Area,
which in 2007 had a total population of 535,911.
