The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera: An Insider's History of the Florida-Alabama Coast

6. A Storm Named Frederic

98 hat hurricane eloise did to the Florida Panhandle pales in comparison to what Hurricane Frederic did to the Alabama coast. It was not that the damage was greater (along the Gulf it was about the same); it was that Frederic drew not only a historic, but also a psychological dividing line in the sand. Since that September day when the storm hit, people along the beaches of Baldwin County have measured time as before and after Frederic. Orange Beach and Gulf Shores had been hurt by the collapse of the real estate market, but not as badly as Florida, simply because investors were not as hungry for Alabama real estate as they were for developable land in the Panhandle. So condominiums came late to the Baldwin beaches. In the early 1970s a small, two-story complex was built down there. The units sold, even though the sellers had to convince the purchasers that there was nothing wrong with owning only to the center of each of the walls around them and that being governed by a condo association was not an infringement on their personal liberty. Once the papers were signed, the owners did what most condo owners did: stayed in their unit a few weeks out of the year and rented it the rest of the time. And rentals filled up. After years of promoting and hoping, the snowbirds finally came. Attracted by the mild climate and low cost of living, they took up residence in condos, cottages, and motels—especially those with kitchenettes—and in rv parks. Condos and motels s i  A Storm Named Frederic W a stor naed frederic 99 were generally newer and better kept. The cottages were, to put it charitably , more rustic. On pilings sunk just deep enough to hold them, they were painted occasionally and patched up as needed. The son of one absentee owner recalled how his father once stopped the car on the way down to the coast to pick up a piece of lumber by the side of the road because it was “just what he needed” to repair the porch. But most of the cottages, condos, and motels located on the water had one thing in common: their builders had cleared the protective dunes and built on the sand. They soon wished they hadn’t. By the late 1970s there were still only fifteen hundred or so year-round residents in Gulf Shores and fewer than that in Orange Beach. However, during the summer more than thirty thousand tourists visited the area—a lot of folks, but few enough to allow the communities to maintain a smalltown , friendly atmosphere that out-of-towners, most from small towns themselves, seemed to like. Because so many of the same folks came down at the same time and stayed in the same places year after year, coastal reunions were frequent and it was possible to say, as one Alabama tourist magazine did, “No one is a stranger in Gulf Shores.” This was the Redneck Riviera—a place where visitors and residents “enjoyed ideal beachfront living . . . with gentle surf at their door steps”— or so the brochures said. There was one chain motel, a few mom-and-pop hostelries, a souvenir shop or two, and the “nest of honky-tonks” that weren’t supposed to be there but were. There was that first condominium, the Hangout, cottages with absentee owners and homes for the permanent residents, some docks, boats big and small, and an infectious laid-back attitude . You could see signs of progress if you looked hard: a better sewage and water system, a new bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway, improved fire and police protection in Gulf Shores, and close to where the old Sand Castle cottage was located the concrete had been poured for the slab of a new, tenunit complex, also called Sand Castle, which was to be the first condo development on the beach east of Alabama Highway 59, the road that brought most visitors to the shore. But that would have to wait. Hurricane Frederic would come first. Ever since Hurricane Camille in 1969, Gulf Coast residents had been paying careful attention to storms. Better warning systems—hurricane hunters , weather satellites, and such—alerted folks to what was happening that September of 1979, as a storm named Frederic soaked the Leeward Islands 100 chapter six and Puerto Rico, weakened over Cuba, reformed and...