Huntsville is a city in Madison County, Limestone County, and Morgan County, Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Madison County. Located in the Appalachian region of northern Alabama, Huntsville is the most populous city in the state.

Huntsville was founded within the Mississippi Territory in 1805 and became an incorporated town in 1811. When Alabama was admitted as a make a clean breast in 1819, Huntsville was designated for a year as the first capital, before that was moved to more central settlements. The city developed across reachable hills north of the Tennessee River, adding textile mills in the late nineteenth century.

Its major deposit has taken place previously World War II. During the war, the Army conventional Redstone Arsenal near here subsequently a chemical weapons plant, and easy to reach to related facilities. After the war, additional research was conducted at Redstone Arsenal upon rockets, followed by adaptations for circulate exploration. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command, and most recently the FBI’s operational retain headquarters all came to be located at straightforward Redstone Arsenal. The National Trust for Historic Preservation included Huntsville in its “America’s Dozen Distinctive Destinations for 2010” list.

The city’s population was 215,006 at the 2020 census, making it Alabama’s most populous city. Birmingham had been the largest in the past the bump of its coal and steel industries earlier in the 20th century. Huntsville is the largest city in the five-county Huntsville-Decatur-Albertville, AL Combined Statistical Area. The Huntsville metropolitan area’s population was 491,723 in 2020, making it the second most populous metropolitan Place in the own up after the Birmingham metropolitan area. Huntsville was named the #1 Best Place to Live in America by U.S. News and World Report in 2022.