Alabama Department of Archives and History Museum

The Alabama Department of Archives and History Museum at 624 Washington Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama is the oldest state-funded archival institution in the United States, established by the Alabama legislature in 1901. Housed in a Beaux-Arts building completed in 1940 and located directly adjacent to the Alabama State Capitol, the institution serves as the official repository for Alabama government records and the primary public interpretive museum for the state's history from its Indigenous peoples through the late 20th century.

The museum's permanent galleries are organized thematically and span Alabama's most significant historical periods: the cultures of Indigenous peoples including the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw nations; the antebellum plantation economy and the enslaved people who sustained it; Alabama's role in the Civil War and Reconstruction; the industrial and agricultural development of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The collections include original documents, maps, military artifacts, period household objects, and an extensive archive of Alabama newspapers and photographs dating to the early 19th century.

The archives component—one of the South's most significant—holds millions of government documents, land records, tax rolls, legislative papers, and personal manuscript collections. A dedicated public reading room provides access to archival holdings for genealogical research, legal history, and academic scholarship, with staff available to assist researchers in navigating the collections. Admission to the museum galleries is free, and the institution is open on weekdays. Its location within a block of the First White House of the Confederacy and the Alabama State Capitol makes it a natural component of a walking tour of Montgomery's historic core.