"ROCKET CITY, U.S.A."

HUNTSVILLE, ALA. (610-636 alt., est. 55,000 pop.), Madison Co. seat; 5 mi. from U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal, Ballistic Missile Agency, Ordnance Guided Missile School; 2 R.R. lines (Southern Ry., Louisville and Nashville R.R.); 2 airlines (8 fits, out dly., incl. drct. srvce. to N.Y., Wash., Chi., Atlanta, Miami); Accoms.: 3 hotels, 21 motels; Local bus fare: 10-c-; Swim: muncpl. pools; Fish: Tenn. River; Yrly. evnts.: Catholic Festival (Aug.), co. fair (Sept.); i-hr. pkng. Imt. dwntwn.; Avge. temp.: 74.6 deg. summer, 50 deg. winter.

Yesterday. Huntsville, on rich bottomland along the Tennessee River 90 miles north of Birmingham, with high hills to the east and west (Wernher von Braun lives on one of them, which has been dubbed Sauerkraut Hill, and is building a home on the highest, Monte Sano), was founded in 1805 by John Hunt, a Revolutionary War militia captain. It was Alabama's first incorporated town (1811), with the first incorporated bank (1816), site of the state's first constitutional convention (1819); from Confederate War Secretary Leroy Pope Walker in Huntsville came the 1861 order to fire on Fort Sumter. For years, Madison County was Alabama's top cotton producer (80,000 bales in 1948) and Huntsville, with nine mills, lived on King Cotton. The Depression almost left one-industry Huntsville a ghost town. Says a longtime resident: "If you could stand on the courthouse steps with as much as a dollar in your pocket, you were the richest man in town." Huntsville's big boom began in 1950, when Wernher von Braun & Co. arrived to start making Army missiles at Redstone Arsenal, a World War II shell-loading installation that had been taken out of commission in 1946.

Today. Sleepy Huntsville, "the water cress capital of the world," came alive almost overnight; its easy Southern cadences intermixed with the get-it-done twang of Yankee technicians and the business-first guttural of the German scientists. Although only one of the cotton mills now remains in operation, Huntsville thrives as never before on an $81-million-a-year Army payroll. Where once Huntsville extended a mile in each direction from its yellow brick courthouse, it now covers 40 square miles, with gracious antebellum homes, squalid Negro slums, and $15,000-per-unit development homes for Redstone's 16,000 employees. In 1950 there were 8,807 telephones in Huntsville; now there are 25,678. Building permits totaled $2,500,000 in 1950; last year the total was $10,767,000 (not including the $20 million building program at Redstone itself). Memorial Parkway, a new four-lane stretch of U.S. 231, is lined with housing developments, more than a dozen modern motels, a $3,000,000 shopping plaza (with a delicatessen featuring Wiener schnitzel), and two new schools. A pride of the community is the new 55-piece Huntsville Civic Orchestra--with Werner Kuers, one of Von Braun's old German rocket hands, as concertmaster.

Tomorrow. Huntsville's future obviously depends on Army missile fortunes--and after Explorer, the hopes of self-styled "Rocket City, U.S.A." shot sky high. Under able, rough-talking Mayor R. B. ("Spec") Searcy, Huntsville has done a good job of meeting the demands imposed by its boom. With pupil enrollment expanding by 1,200 a year, Huntsville last week opened a million-dollar junior high school, plans to open two more schools in September, has three others on the drawing boards. (Because of the heavy load of Redstone children, the U.S. provides federal aid to schools--$1,000,000 in 1957.) Says School Superintendent Raymond Christian: "So far we haven't had to double-shift. Let 'em come. We'll be ready." Bonds for a $4,000.000 sewage disposal plant went on the market last week. The Huntsville Housing Authority has built 620 low-rent housing units, has 539 more in the final planning stage, will have three urban renewal projects underway by midyear. The Albert Pick Hotels chain plans a 250-room motel with a banquet room for 400 people, and the Chrysler Corp. and other Redstone contractors plan expanded Huntsville field offices. When Explorer orbited, the daily-except-Saturday Huntsville Times put out a Saturday morning "Satellite Extra" with a 120-point streamer: JUPITER-C PUTS UP MOON. Huntsville hopes to ride just as high as that moon. Says Times Editor Rees Amis: "I just don't see how we can do anything but grow and prosper."

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