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of Alabama. While the city attracted international attention when Mercedes-Benz announced it would build its first automotive assembly plant in North America in Tuscaloosa County, the university remains the dominant economic and cultural engine in the city.
Tuscaloosa is the principal city of the Tuscaloosa Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Tuscaloosa, Greene, and Hale counties.
History
The area at the Fall Line shoals of what would later be known as the Black Warrior River had long been well known to the various Indian tribes whose shifting fortunes brought them to West Alabama. The river shoals at Tuscaloosa represented the southernmost site on the river which could be forded under most conditions. A network of Indian trails converged upon the place, the same network that, in the first years of the 19th century, was followed by a few intrepid white frontiersmen to the area.
The pace of white settlement increased greatly after the War of 1812. A small assortment of log cabins soon arose near the large Creek village at the fall line of the river, which the new settlers named in honor of the legendary Chief Tuskaloosa of a Muskogean-speaking tribe. In 1817, Alabama became a territory, and on December 13, 1819, the territorial legislature incorporated the town of Tuscaloosa, one day before Congress admitted Alabama to the Union as a state.
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