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On The Road Again
Souvenir City, Gulf Shores, Ala. By RAY BALOGH | The Municipal
Embarking on this roadside adventure begins with walking into the mouth of a 70-foot-long shark.
ABOVE: The Souvenir City kitchen produces a prodigious amount of homemade fudge every day. TOP PHOTO: The giant shark at the entrance of Souvenir City is an iconic landmark in Gulf Shores, enticing “hundreds upon hundreds” of shutterbugs to capture their moment with the beast every day. (All photos courtesy of Souvenir City, except the shark photo, which is courtesy of Lynn Jordan) 14 THE MUNICIPAL | JULY 2021
The kitschy gimmick marks the entrance to Souvenir City, located just a couple blocks from the Gulf of Mexico in Gulf Shores, Ala. The family-owned business started in 1956 and has grown with the city, which has burgeoned from 356 residents, according to the 1960 census, to its present population of 13,203. Souvenir City’s story begins in the 1940s when Josie Weaver Weir ventured to open a small cafe dubbed Jo’s Lunchbox. In 1956 she converted the 1,000-square-foot eatery into The Anchor Gift Shop. Three years later, her son, Clyde Weir, took over the gift shop and rechristened it Souvenir City, a name he “kind of stole” from a store he visited in Miami Beach, Fla., during his honeymoon. His efforts to “sell inexpensive little trinkets and things” scored well with the growing populace and escalating number of tourists. The entrance was originally marked with a giant conch shell, but when Weir learned that a competitor planned to open across the street, he installed a 50-foot shark to catch the attention of passersby. Business went, er, swimmingly until Feb. 4, 1996, when the building, its contents, the conch and the shark were all destroyed in a fire.
