Auburn, Alabama | |||
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City | |||
Campus of Auburn University
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Motto: "The Loveliest Village On The Plains" | |||
Location in Lee County in the state of Alabama |
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Location in the United States | |||
Coordinates: 32°35′52″N 85°28′51″W / 32.59778°N 85.48083°WCoordinates: 32°35′52″N 85°28′51″W / 32.59778°N 85.48083°W | |||
Country | United States | ||
State | Alabama | ||
County | Lee | ||
Incorporated | 1839 | ||
Government | |||
• Mayor | Bill Ham Jr. | ||
Area | |||
• City | 59.1 sq mi (140.8 km2) | ||
• Land | 58.07 sq mi (139.1 km2) | ||
• Water | 0.4 sq mi (1.7 km2) | ||
Elevation | 702 ft (214 m) | ||
Highest elevation | 846 ft (258 m) | ||
Lowest elevation | 387 ft (118 m) | ||
Population (2015) | |||
• City | 62,059 | ||
• Density | 954.8/sq mi (368.65/km2) | ||
• Metro | 150,933 (US: 270th) | ||
Time zone | CST (UTC-6) | ||
• Summer (DST) | CDT (UTC-5) | ||
ZIP code | 36830-36832, 36849 | ||
Area code(s) | 334 | ||
FIPS code | 01-03076 | ||
GNIS feature ID | 0113277 | ||
Website | www |
Auburn is a city in Lee County, Alabama, United States. It is the largest city in eastern Alabama with a 2015 population of 62,059. It is a principal city of the Auburn-Opelika Metropolitan Area. The Auburn-Opelika, AL MSA with a population of 150,933, along with the Columbus, GA-AL MSA and Tuskegee, Alabama, comprises the greater Columbus-Auburn-Opelika, GA-AL CSA, a region home to 501,649 residents.
Auburn is a college town and is the home of Auburn University. It is Alabama's fastest-growing metropolitan area and the nineteenth fastest-growing metro area in the United States 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...”
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.
Auburn was incorporated on February 2, 1839, in what was then Macon County, covering an area of 2 square miles (5.2 km2). 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.