Dauphin Island Diaries
A long-form history podcast focused on the people, places, and stories that shaped Dauphin Island and the Alabama Gulf Coast.
Episodes
18 episodes
DID Bonus INTERVIEWSDAY Material (7) - Interview with Bella Myers (Topics of Discussion: The Pelican Girls, Their Role as the Mothers of Mobile, and the Story of their Arrival in the Colony of French Louisiana)
It’s INTERVIEWSDAY!This week on INTERVIEWSDAY (Interview Tuesday), we visit with Bella Myers, a Mobile-area historian and tour guide with Bienville Bites Food Tour, for an extended conversation about the remarkable w...
DID Ep 10 - Pelican on the Bay - The Story of the Pelican Girls
In 1704, twenty-three young Frenchwomen crossed the Atlantic aboard the Pelican in search of husbands—and a future—in the struggling colony of French Louisiana.They had been promised opportunity in a land described to them as al...
DID Bonus INTERVIEWSDAY Content (6) - Interview with Mendel Graeber (Topics of Discussion: The Dauphin Island Sea Lab, The Alabama Aquarium, and Their History, Roles, and Significance in South Alabama)
It’s INTERVIEWSDAY!This week on INTERVIEWSDAY (Interview Tuesday), we visit with Mendel Graeber, director of the Alabama Aquarium at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.This is not a traditional sit-down interview. Men...
DID Ep 9 - Bay Studies: The Dauphin Island Sea Lab and the Alabama Aquarium
Dauphin Island may appear permanent, but the island—and the waters surrounding it—has always been changing.Alabama’s marine-science program began in a small building raised above the marshes of Heron Bay. It later moved aboard a converte...
DID Bonus INTERVIEWSDAY Material (4) - Interview with Connie Roan
It's INTERVIEWSDAY!This week on INTERVIEWSDAY (Interview Tuesday), we visit with Connie Roan, a longtime educator who spent the final years of her remarkable 44-year teaching career at Dauphin Island's historic L...
DID Ep 8 - School Days: The Little Red Schoolhouse
For nearly a century, one small wooden schoolhouse has stood as a witness to the changing story of Dauphin Island.Long before there was a bridge connecting the island to the mainland, children from fishing and oystering families gathered...
DID Bonus INTERVIEWSDAY Material (4) - Interview with Mike Bunn
It's INTERVIEWSDAY!In this Interviewsday edition (Interview Tuesday) of Dauphin Island Diaries, I sit down with historian Mike Bunn to take a deeper look at the fascinating story behind last week's episode, "Ghost Town...
DID Ep 7 - Ghost Town at the Top of the Bay: The Rise and Fall of Blakeley
200 years ago, there was another city at the head of Mobile Bay.For a brief but remarkable time, Blakeley rivaled Mobile in size, commerce, and ambition. Founded by a Connecticut entrepreneur who believed there was room for another great...
DID Bonus INTERVIEWSDAY Material (3) - Interview with Jason Herrmann
It's INTERVIEWSDAY!In this Interviewsday edition (Interview Tuesday) of Dauphin Island Diaries, I sit down with Jason Herrmann of the Alabama Marine Resources Division to explore one of the Gulf Coast's most valuable natural reso...
DID Ep 6 - The Sentinel at the Mouth of the Bay: The SAD Island Lighthouse
The Sand Island Lighthouse stands three miles south of Dauphin Island at the mouth of Mobile Bay. Today it sits alone on a small ring of granite rip rap, battered by storms, erosion, and time. But it wasn't always that way.In this episod...
DID Bonus INTERVIEWSDAY Material (2): Interview with Ms. Anita Phillips
In this Interviewsday edition of Dauphin Island Diaries, I sit down with longtime Dauphin Island resident Anita Phillips to talk about life on the island, how it has changed over the years, and some of the people and places that have helped sha...
DID Ep 5 - The Lost Republic: How the Secession of the Republic of West Florida Changed the Gulf Coast and Why You May Not Have Heard of It
For 74 days in 1810, there was a country on the Gulf Coast that most Americans have never heard of.It had a flag, a government, a governor, and a claim to territory stretching from modern-day Louisiana toward Mobile Bay and the Perdido R...
DID Bonus INTERVIEWSDAY Material (1) - Interview with Shari Pope Moon
🎙️ FREE INTERVIEW RELEASE 🎙️This week, we're opening up a conversation that has never been released before.Back in March, I sat down with Shari Pope Moon in Cadillac Square on Dauphin Island. We weren't in a studio. We weren't in ...
DID Ep 4 - The World Is Your Oyster: The Decline and Reinvention of Mobile Bay's Oyster Industry
Long before tourists crossed the bridge to Dauphin Island…before beach houses lined the west end…and before seafood restaurants turned oysters into a delicacy for visitors…there were people whose entire lives revolved around the waters of Mobil...
DID Ep 3 - Life After the Final Voyage: Artificial Reefs Off the Alabama Coast
Artificial reefs are one of the Alabama Gulf Coast’s strangest success stories.What began decades ago with fishermen dropping old cars and scrap into the Gulf evolved into one of the largest artificial reef systems in the world....
DID Ep 2 - Ancient Snowbirds: How We Got the Shell Mounds
The shell mounds of Dauphin Island are among the oldest man-made features on the island—but they are not what they first appear to be.Built over generations by indigenous peoples connected to the Bottle Creek site in the Mobile-Tensaw De...
DID Ep 1 - The Complicated Story of Fort Gaines
On the eastern end of Dauphin Island stands Fort Gaines—a quiet coastal fort with a long and complicated past.Built to guard the entrance to Mobile Bay, Fort Gaines has stood through shifting flags, changing purposes, and one of the most...