You type one city or the other into the map. The pin drops you on a condo strip or at Highway 59. Drive Beach Boulevard anyway. The high-rises stop. The dunes start. You are in Gulf State Park whether the sign says Gulf Shores or Orange Beach.
The park opened in 1939. The United States deeded the land that year. CCC work had already started in 1934. Gulf Shores did not become a city until 1956–58. Orange Beach did not incorporate until 1984. The park was here first. It is 6,150 acres of dunes, freshwater lakes, and two miles of Gulf beach, sitting mostly between Highway 59 and State Highway 161. Romar Beach and Cotton Bayou are park lots squeezed among Orange Beach condos. At the 2024 pier reopening, Grant Brown of Gulf Shores said the park “serves as a bridge between Orange Beach and Gulf Shores.” Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon said the whole park is a gem. He grew up on this pier.
Same calendar day, sixteen years apart. That is the local calendar.
The first saltwater pier went out 825 feet in 1968. Hurricane Frederic took it in 1979. They rebuilt. Ivan took that one too.
Ivan made landfall just west of Gulf Shores at 1:50 a.m. on September 16, 2004, a Category 3 with 120-mile-an-hour winds. The old lodge — opened 1974, the seafood buffet, the Mardi Gras balls, the place inland families could actually afford — was destroyed. The pier broke into three sections. Saltwater stood in the park. The lodge came down in 2007. The rubble went offshore as an artificial reef.
The Lodge that opened in November 2018 is not that building. It is a 350-room Hilton, paid for in large part with BP Deepwater Horizon restoration money and built to Certified Fortified standards. The buildings sit on piers so surge can pass under. If you came looking for the old buffet lodge, you will not find it.
The concrete pier Alabama put back in 2009 runs about 1,540–1,544 feet. Do not come here for a swim. The address is 20800 East Beach Boulevard. Open twenty-four hours. You pay at the lot. Rips form near piers.
They had a party planned for that pier. A $2.4 million upgrade — ipe decking, turtle-friendly lights, an observation deck with an elevator — was set for September 16, 2020.
Sally came ashore at Gulf Shores that morning instead. The National Hurricane Center has landfall near 4:45 a.m. Central, a Category 2. The ribbon-cutting had already been postponed because the storm was in the Gulf. ADCNR later described a 200-foot collapsed section. Commissioner Blankenship, watching the Weather Channel from Montgomery, said they panned from the surviving Lodge to “a gigantic 300-foot section that was gone, gone.” The repair ran $13.6 million. Soft open August 19, 2024; official ribbon-cutting that September. Even with half the pier closed in 2023, more than 100,000 people still came.
This is not a boat crowd. State Parks Director Greg Lein said it: “Not everybody owns a boat.” The regulars call themselves Pier Rats. Mayor Kennon’s version of making it: as a kid he reached pier royalty the day Mr. Hollis Ledlow offered him extra alewives. That is the register here. A man on a pier offering bait to a kid.
Lake Shelby sits immediately inland of the Gulf beach, inside the same park. Fresh water behind the dunes. That is enough.
You came to pick a city. What you get is the hinge. Park at the pier if you came to fish or to walk the boards. Park at the Pavilion, 22250 East Beach Boulevard, if you came to swim. The park is older than both towns. The pier is what they both still claim.
Further reading
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