Bon Secour is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Baldwin County, Alabama, United States. It lies along the eastern coastline of Bon Secour Bay (a contiguous bay that sits along the eastern edge of Mobile Bay). Bon Secour is over due east of the Alabama–Mississippi state line, near Gulf Shores, and over west of Pensacola, Florida. The name "Bon Secour" derives from the French phrase meaning "safe harbor" due to the secluded location on the inside coast of the Fort Morgan peninsula of southern Alabama.
Bon Secour lies on the Bon Secour River. Elevation is above sea level. The estuarial river system empties into Bon Secour Bay at Mobile Bay.
It is part of the Daphne-Fairhope-Foley metropolitan area.
As of the 2020 census, Bon Secour had a population of 1,754.
It was first listed as a CDP prior to the 2020 Census.
Bon Secour is sometimes mentioned in hurricane report statistics, for the region, since Bon Secour is the easternmost town inside the coastline of Mobile Bay when entering the bay from the south, indicating weather and tide conditions for the population at the southeast end of Mobile Bay, nearest the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico. By contrast, Mobile, Alabama is located near the (diagonally opposite) north end of Mobile Bay, much farther from the Gulf tide and hurricane storm surges.
Bon Secour was originally founded by French settlers as a fishing village in the 1700s. Namedsafe harbor in French by Jacques Cook, a French Canadian from Montreal, a member of Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville's colonizing expedition of 1699. He was a participant in the founding of Mobile in 1702.
The location of Bon Secour on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico makes it especially vulnerable to hurricanes:
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill drastically reduced the availability of Gulf shrimp, so many people lost their jobs with the fishing industry. In June 2010, oil globs and submerged oil began washing ashore on the beaches of the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, killing many fish and crabs.
The town has a total area of 3.4 square miles (8.7 km<sup>2</sup>), all land, although it lies along the Bon Secour River and bay.
Bon Secour enjoys a very mild climate throughout the year. High temperatures in the winter average around 65 degrees; summer-time high temperatures average around 87. Bon Secour also averages of rainfall per year.
Bon Secour was first listed as a census designated place in the 2020 U.S. census.
Bon Secour is served by the Baldwin County Public Schools system, in the nearby town of Foley. An elementary school, an intermediate school, a middle school, and a high school serve Foley.
The Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is not really located in Bon Secour, but nearby, along Ft. Morgan Road, on the island, over the Intracoastal Waterway bridge. The Bon Secour NWR consists of over of wildlife habitat lying directly west of Gulf Shores, Alabama, on the Fort Morgan peninsula (western sliver of the island) formed by the Intracoastal Waterway, Oyster Bay, Bon Secour Bay, and Mobile Bay. The refuge was established by the United States Congress in 1980 to provide habitat for non-game birds migrating south in the fall and north in the spring. The migration paths from Bon Secour lead south to lower Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America. The Bon Secour refuge also serves as one of the largest undeveloped parcels of land on the Alabama coast, with sand dunes which are a reminder of the Gulf Coast, as it formerly existed. Consequently, the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge has been named among the ten natural wonders of Alabama. It has become a birding Mecca.
The following are reference sources, repeated alphabetically: