The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera

Tanya Ott | September 14, 2012

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The beaches that run from Mobile Bay to Panama City are some of the most beautiful in the world. Prior to World War Two they were sparsely populated and undeveloped. But that began to change after the war when the beach became a tourist destination. In a 1978 article for The New York Times, Alabama native Howell Raines dubbed that stretch of coastline the redneck Riviera. Raines may have given the area its name, but the author of a new book on the region picks up the story from there – as Greg Bass reports for WBHM’s Tapestry.