Earlier this year I wrote an item about Alabama's only welcome center not located on an Interstate highway. In this post I'm continuing that tourism theme with these two brief items found in the old Gadsden Times newspaper issues I'm reading.
The articles describe an effort by the state Chamber of Commerce to persuade tourists bound north from Florida to enjoy some of Alabama's beauty and recreational opportunities. Members of the Chamber, armed with "thousands" of maps and promotional booklets, were driven south by state patrolmen. Also noted is a similar foray into the Midwest in the fall of 1939. The state had contracted with the Chamber to conduct these advertising efforts and others.
At the time the state had no tourism bureau. In October 1951 the legislature created the Bureau of Publicity and Information. That became the Bureau of Tourism and Travel in May 1984 and finally the Alabama Tourism Department in 2010.
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