Garden and Guns recently named Fairhope as the "Best Birding Town" in the South!  Alex V. Robinson, Special Events Coordinator for the City of Fairhope sends this quote from the article "Southern Dream Towns" by Allston McCrady in Garden and Guns magazine:

BEST BIRDING TOWN
Fairhope, Alabama
Perched high on the bluffs of Alabama's Eastern Shore, the town of Fairhope sits squarely on the Alabama Coastal Birding Trail. Each spring and fall, the 240-mile-long birding extravaganza surrounding Mobile Bay attracts upwards of one million visitors of the wingless variety, hoping to get a glimpse at the hoards of
migratory birds that use the bay as a rest stop on their routes to and from Mexico and beyond.

When the flocks have passed, however, Fairhope does not fold up its wings. The town is known for its sweeping panoramic views of Mobile Bay, its old bluff cottages, its tree-lined avenues, and its explosion of flowers lining planters and windows of downtown shops. The town owns and operates eight greenhouses. Even the trash receptacles double as planters.

The area has long been a haven for artists and writers, and maintains a progressive, culturally vibrant climate year-round. The annual Arts & Crafts Festival in March is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the South. Each April, the Fairhope Yacht Club hosts the Dauphin Island Regatta, the largest one-day sailing regatta in the nation, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2008.

A Typical Day:
Start your day at Julwin's Restaurant with a stick-to-your-ribs country breakfast. Then head to the Weeks Bay Nature Reserve and stroll on walkways through the marshlands, or try your hand casting for redfish and speckled trout. In late morning check out Page & Palette bookstore in the beautiful French Quarter, where you can eavesdrop on the ritualistic gathering of Fairhope's intellectual and creative fringe. Panini Pete's, just behind the bookstore, offers crepes, seared tuna salad, and European sandwiches, with a courtyard for a patio lunch. Spend your afternoon exploring more than two hundred boutiques, galleries, antiques stores, and eclectic shops in the tree-lined downtown. Stroll through the award-winning rose garden in the park along the waterfront. For dinner, try the Colony Grill's salmon filet glazed with rum and maple syrup, with "angry" hot pepper flakes.

Plant Your Roots:
Fairhope was once called the best-kept secret on the Gulf Coast, but its secret is out, so home prices are up, though still lower than in many coastal towns. The flip side to higher home prices is low property taxes and no sales tax. Fairhope was founded on utopian principles as a single-tax colony, where resources are pooled for the benefit of the town (the latest fruits of this program are an Olympic-size swimming pool and a planned 43,000-square-foot library). You can buy historic waterfront homes for around $2 million or cottages for $500,000