Lee County is a county located in east central Alabama. As of the 2020 census the population was 174,241. The county seat is Opelika, and the largest city is Auburn. The county was established in 1866 and is named for General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870), who served as General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States in 1865. Lee County comprises the Auburn-Opelika, AL Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Columbus-Auburn-Opelika, GA-AL Combined Statistical Area.

Opelika is a city in and the county seat of Lee County in the east-central part of the U.S. state of Alabama. It is a principal city of the Auburn-Opelika Metropolitan Area. As of the 2020 census, the population of Opelika is 30,995, an increase of 17.1 percent from the 2010 Census where the population was 26,477. The Auburn-Opelika, AL MSA with a population of 150,933, along with the Columbus, Georgia metropolitan area, comprises the Greater Columbus combined statistical area, a region home to 501,649 residents.