Dauphin Island is an island town in Mobile County, Alabama, United States, on a barrier island of the same name, in the Gulf of Mexico. It incorporated in 1988. The population was 1,778 at the 2020 census, up from 1,238 at the 2010 census. The town is part of the Mobile metropolitan area. The island was renamed for Louis XIV of France's great-grandson and heir, the dauphin, the future Louis XV of France. The name of the island is often mistaken as Dolphin Island; the word dauphin is French for dolphin, but historically, the term was used as the title of the heir apparent to the French monarch.
Fort Gaines and seashore vegetation on the eastern end of Dauphin Island
View of the southeastern shore of the island
Inside Shell Mound Park
Typical elevated house on Dauphin Island
Mobile County is located in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Alabama. It is the third-most populous county in the state after Jefferson and Madison counties. As of the 2020 census, its population was 414,809. Its county seat is Mobile, which was founded as a deepwater port on the Mobile River. The only such port in Alabama, it has long been integral to the economy for providing access to inland waterways as well as the Gulf of Mexico.
Mobile Government Plaza in Mobile
Aerial view of the Mobile River at its confluence with Chickasaw Creek. This photograph was taken around 1990, during construction of the Cochrane-Africatown bridge carrying U.S. Route 90 across the river.
Interstate 10 entering the Wallace Tunnel in Mobile, Alabama.
