High on a bluff above the Alabama River, Selma is a marketing, agricultural, and manufacturing center. William Rufus King, vice president under Franklin Pierce, named the town after a poem by the Gaelic poet Ossian. The classic lines of Greek Revival and elegance of Georgian Colonial architecture blend with Early American cottages, Victorian mansions, and modern houses to lend the city an air of the antebellum South. Once an arsenal of the Confederacy--second only to Richmond--Selma was a leading target for Union armies in 1865.

Selma fell on April 2, 1865, when 2,000 soldiers were captured, ending the city's role as the Confederacy's supply depot. The naval foundry (where the warships Tennessee, Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, and others were built), a rolling mill, powder works, and an arsenal were all destroyed. With defeat came an end to the era of wealthy plantation owners and a leisurely living in which horse racing and cockfighting were gentlemanly diversions.

Selma was also the scene of civil rights activity in the mid-1960s, with a march on the Edmund Pettus bridge. Spiritual leadership was provided by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Andrew Young at the Brown Chapel A. M. E. Church.

County farmers raise cattle, pecan trees, cotton, soybeans, hay, corn, and grain. Selma is also the headquarters of a number of industries. The town became an inland port city in 1969 when a nine-foot-deep channel on the Alabama River was completed.