thumb|The historic Scott-Yarbrough House, [[Pebble Hill, in Auburn, Alabama.]]
Auburn is a city in Lee County, Alabama, United States. It is the largest city in eastern Alabama. The population was 76,143 at the 2020 census. It is a principal city of the Auburn-Opelika Metropolitan Area. The Auburn-Opelika, AL MSA with a 2020 population of 193,773, along with the Columbus, GA-AL MSA and Tuskegee, Alabama, comprises the greater Columbus-Auburn-Opelika, GA-AL CSA, a region home to 563,967 residents as of 2020.
Auburn is a historic college town and home to Auburn University, the highest academically ranked university in the state. It is Alabama's fastest-growing metropolitan area and the 19th-fastest-growing metro area in the United States as measured since 1990. U.S. News ranked Auburn among its top ten list of best places to live in the United States for the year 2009. The city's unofficial nickname is "The Loveliest Village on the Plains", taken from a line in the poem The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith: "Sweet Auburn! Loveliest village of the plain..."
History
Inhabited in antiquity by the Creek, the land on which Auburn sits was opened to settlement in 1832 with the Treaty of Cusseta. The first settlers arrived in the winter of 1836 from Harris County, Georgia. These settlers, led by Judge John J. Harper, intended to build a town that would be the religious and educational center for the area. War soon broke out between treaty violators and the Creeks, which led to the Creeks being forcefully moved towards Oklahoma.
Auburn was incorporated on February 2, 1839, in what was then Macon County, covering an area of . By that time, Methodist and Baptist churches had been established, and a school had been built and had come into operation. In the mid-1840s, separate academies for boys and girls were established in addition to the primary school. This concentration of educational institutions led to a rapid influx of families from the planter class into Auburn in the 1840s and 1850s. By 1858, of the roughly 1,000 free residents of Auburn, some 500 were students.
In 1856, the state legislature chartered a Methodist college, the East Alabama Male College in Auburn. This college, now Auburn University, opened its doors in 1859, offering a classical and liberal education.
In 1892, the college became the first four-year college in Alabama to admit women. This, combined with increased interest in scientific agriculture and engineering and new funding from business licenses, allowed the city to start expanding again. By 1910, Auburn's population had returned to its antebellum level. SIAA championships won by the football team of what was then officially Alabama Polytechnic Institute, but often called "Auburn" for short, brought attention and support to Auburn, and helped fill the city's coffers.
Fortunes were quickly reversed with the collapse of cotton prices in the early 1920s and the subsequent Great Depression a decade later. Due to these events, the state government became unable to fund the college. With Auburn's economy completely derived from the college, residents were forced into a barter economy to support themselves.
Money began to flow into Auburn again with America's entry into World War II. Auburn's campus was turned into a training ground for technical specialists in the armed forces. After the war, Auburn was flooded by soldiers returning to school on the G.I. Bill.
Primarily due to this influx of students, Auburn began a period of growth that lasted through the 1950s and 1960s. A considerable amount of residential and business construction pushed Auburn's growth outside of the original boundaries of the city, leading to a series of large annexations which expanded Auburn to nearly . Construction of Interstate 85 beginning in 1957 connected Auburn to the major cities of the state. This allowed for Auburn University (as it was renamed in 1960) to move more home football games to Auburn after years of playing "home" games in larger cities, creating a strong tourism component in Auburn's economy. Auburn Mall opened as "Village Mall" in 1973.
Growth slowed somewhat in the 1970s, and a series of budget cuts made it clear that Auburn's sole economic reliance on Auburn University put the city in a tenuous position.
Backlash against what was seen as an ineffectual city council led to the election of Jan Dempsey as mayor in 1980 and the removal of the previous city government system in favor of a council-manager system. With a new government in place, the city began aggressively pursuing industry, leading to a nearly 1,200% increase in the number of industrial jobs over the next twenty years. As public satisfaction with the city administration reached record levels, Auburn began very rapid residential growth.
thumb|Historic Noble Hall, Auburn, Alabama
A series of reports in the 1980s and 1990s ranking the Auburn public school system among the top in the state and nation convinced thousands of new residents to move to Auburn over the past 25 years. Between 1980 and 2003, Auburn's population grew by 65%, and Auburn's economy expanded by 220%.
The population growth has only accelerated into the 21st century, both organically within the city and through annexation and incorporation of surrounding portions of Lee County. Auburn's population has grown over 77% from 2000 to the latest 2020 decennial census figures. With the continued rapid growth comes issues of urban sprawl and expansions to infrastructure, which have become two of Auburn's primary political issues.
Geography
thumb|upright|A creek flowing through [[Chewacla State Park in Auburn.]]
The city of Auburn lies in western Lee County and is bordered by the city of Opelika to the northeast and by Chambers County to the north. The city stretches south to the Macon County line in the southwest.
Auburn sits on the Fall Line at the juncture of the piedmont plateau and the coastal plain. Portions of Auburn also include the southernmost exposure of rocks indicating the Appalachian orogeny—as such, the last foothill of the Appalachian Mountains lies in Chewacla State Park in southern Auburn. As a result of these three varied physical environments, Auburn has an extremely diverse geology.
The southwest and west regions of the city on the plateau are marked by rolling plains and savannahs, with the undeveloped portion primarily being used for cattle grazing and ranching. South of this region sits the coastal plain, with sandy soil and pine forest. Parts of north Auburn have much more rugged topographies, with thick forests in high hills and deep hollows of the type common to parts of eastern Tennessee. The region surrounded by Chewacla Park in the south of the city contains sharp peaks and sudden drops of elevation as the 1.05 billion-year-old rock of the Appalachians meets the coastal plain.
Auburn sits near the divide between the Chattahoochee and Tallapoosa River watersheds, though the vast majority of the city resides in the latter. Auburn is drained by three main creek systems: in the south, by the Chewacla/Opintlocco Creek system; in the north, by the Saugahatchee Creek system; and in the extreme northern reaches of Auburn by Sandy Creek. The dividing line between the Chewacla and Saugahatchee watersheds roughly follows railroad line east–west through the center of town.
According to the United States Census Bureau in 2000, the city has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it (1.11%) is water. The elevation of Auburn at City Hall is above sea level; though due to Auburn's diverse topography, elevation ranges from above sea level where Chewacla Creek crosses Sand Hill Road to above sea level in northern Auburn near the Chambers County line.
Climate
Typical of the Deep South, Auburn has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), marked by mild winters, early springs, long, hot, muggy summers, and warm autumns. Due to its position near the Gulf of Mexico, the city receives a significant amount of rainfall—on average, per year—though there is a distinct dry season in the late summer and early fall. Severe storm activity – thunderstorms producing damaging winds or large hail – is common from the late winter through early summer. There is the risk of tornadoes. Owing to its proximity to the Gulf, Auburn is also subject to fringe effects from tropical storms and hurricanes in the summer and fall. Hurricanes Opal in 1995 and Ivan in 2004 are among two of the most notable tropical systems to affect the Auburn area in recent memory, bringing torrential rains and high winds.
Winters are typically mild, with an average of snowfall, though more than three-fourths of all seasons do not have any measurable snow. and there are an average of 5.6 nights with sub- lows.