Helena is a city in Jefferson and Shelby counties in the divulge of Alabama. Helena is considered a suburb of Birmingham and share of the Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area. As of 2022 the United States Census Bureau estimates the population to be 21,560.

Helena is terribly regarded as a place to enliven and raise children; Business Week ranked the city as the 13th “Best area to Raise Your Kids” in 2007. It has the eighth-lowest crime rate per population in the U.S., and the city was ranked in Money magazine’s 2007 list of “Best Places to Live: Top 100” in the U.S., placing at number 91. The Alabama League of Municipalities awarded Helena the 2008 Municipal Achievement Award (population 10,001 to 20,000).

Helena initially incorporated in 1877, but reincorporated in 1917 after errors were discovered in the initial inclusion papers. Its population was not recorded separately in the U.S. Census until 1920, reflecting the unconventional date of incorporation.

The Place was long the territory of the historic Muscogee people, known by English colonists as the Creek Indians. While Scots-Irish and English traders had dealings with them, and there was some armed proceedings in the beforehand 19th century, most European-American settlers did not allow this area until 1849. This was after the United States had conducted Indian Removal of the Creek and other Southeastern tribes in the 1830s, to lands west of the Mississippi River.