Photograph of Mount Vernon Arsenal — Photograph by E. W. Russell, Photographer, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Mount Vernon Arsenal-Searcy Hospital Complex

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

From the record

“The Mount Vernon Arsenal in Mount Vernon, Alabama is a former United States Army munitions depot (arsenal), was used as a prison for captured Native Americans, and was served as a psychiatric hospital. The site is home to the now-closed Searcy Hospital.”
Wikipedia article Mount Vernon Arsenal, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 146 National Register listings published here for Mobile County · listed in 1988 · category: District.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Listed as. Mount Vernon Arsenal--Searcy Hospital Complex - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. Coy Smith Hwy. 1/2 mi. W of AL 43, Mt. Vernon, 36560
When was it listed? May 1988
Category. district
Census division. Mount Vernon
Architectural style. Greek Revival architecture
National Register reference number. 88000676 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

637 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 637 fires within 5 miles of Mount Vernon Arsenal-Searcy Hospital Complex between 1994 and 2020, burning about 13,822 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 352 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Arson/incendiarism	352
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	148
Debris and open burning	120
Recreation and ceremony	8
Equipment and vehicle use	3
Railroad operations and maintenance	2
Smoking	2
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1
Natural	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
8 September 1995	Debris and open burning	15 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
29 September 1994	Debris and open burning	15 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
29 September 1994	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
29 September 1994	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
27 September 2004	Arson/incendiarism	3.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
27 September 1999	Arson/incendiarism	8.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
25 September 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	35 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	SWR-20150925-001
22 September 2019	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	15 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	20190922-25

Every fire recorded in Mobile County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

1 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Ellicott Stone	6.2 miles	1973

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 88000676 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Mobile County	All 146 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.