A new era for aerospace and defense has been emerging — and Huntsville is capitalizing on it.
Before the late 1950s, the northern Alabama community’s claim to fame was as the “watercress capital of the world.”
Then the Army’s nascent ballistic missile program moved to the shuttered World War II chemical weapons outpost that would become Redstone Arsenal. As the U.S. ratcheted up its space race with the Soviet Union, NASA established the Marshall Space Flight Center next door, developing the giant Saturn V rockets that would make Apollo moon missions possible.
Huntsville has been “Rocket City” ever since.