There were many utopian communities created in the U.S. in the first century of independence, but only one in Alabama. Fairhope was the creation of some midwestern followers of Henry George, the economist who pushed for a “single tax,” the tax on land. The pioneers of Fairhope had to work with governmental structures very different from their ideals, but they succeeded in many ways and the Single Tax Colony still exists today. Notable among the early settlers was Marietta Johnson, who founded The Organic School, one of the first progressive schools and one taken as a model by John Dewey, which flourished into the 1930s.
