Dauphin IslandA 14-mile barrier island at the mouth of Mobile Bay — Fort Gaines on the eastern tip, the Audubon Bird Sanctuary's 137 acres of maritime forest, and Alabama's officially designated Sunset Capital

Dauphin Island is Alabama's only barrier island — a fourteen-mile spit at the mouth of Mobile Bay where the freshwater of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta empties into the Gulf of Mexico. The eastern third is the busy end: Fort Gaines (built 1821, central to the Battle of Mobile Bay), the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and Estuarium, the public fishing pier, and the marina at Aloe Bay. The middle of the island holds the residential Bienville Boulevard ribbon and the 137-acre Audubon Bird Sanctuary — a national-recreation-trail-listed boardwalk through maritime forest and Gaillard Lake. The West End past the bridge is the quieter, sugar-sand stretch where the bridges run out and the beach widens.

Our rentals run from Gulf-front stilted homes on Bienville Boulevard West to Beach Club condos near the public pier on the East End, three- and four-bedroom canal-front houses on Cadillac Avenue with private docks on the Mississippi Sound side, the Pelican Point cluster of pet-friendly cottages near the West End beach, and the Bayou Heron condos on the Sound. The Mobile Bay Ferry ($21 per car each way) crosses from the eastern tip to Fort Morgan in 35 minutes — the local-favorite way to make a day-trip loop to Gulf Shores without driving back through Mobile.