Auburn is a city in Lee County, Alabama, United States. It is the largest city in eastern Alabama with a 2008 population of 56,088. It is a principal city of the Auburn Metropolitan Area, an MSA with a population of 130,516 which, along with the Columbus, Georgia-Alabama MSA and the Tuskegee, Alabama Micropolitan Statistical Area, comprises the greater Columbus–Auburn–Opelika, Georgia—Alabama Combined Statistical Area a region home to approximately 500,000 residents.
Auburn is a college town and is the home of Auburn University. Auburn has been marked in recent years by rapid growth, and is currently the fastest growing metropolitan area in Alabama and the nineteenth-fastest growing metro area in the United States since 1990. U.S.News has ranked Auburn second in its 2009 list of best places to live in United States . The city's unofficial nickname is “The Loveliest Village On The Plains,” taken from a line in the poem “The Deserted Village” by Oliver Goldsmith: “Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain…”
The city of Auburn lies in western Lee County and is bordered by the city of Opelika to the northeast and by Chambers County to the north. The city stretches south to the Macon County line in the southwest.
Auburn sits on the fall line at the juncture of the piedmont plateau and the coastal plain. Portions of Auburn also include the southernmost exposure of rocks indicating the Appalachian orogeny—as such, the last foothill of the Appalachian Mountains lies in Chewacla State Park in southern Auburn. As a result of these three varied physical environments, Auburn has an extremely diverse geology.
The southwest and west regions of the city on the plateau are marked by rolling plains and savannahs, with the undeveloped portion primarily being used for cattle grazing and ranching. South of this region sits the coastal plain, with sandy soil and pine forest. Parts of north Auburn have much more rugged topographies, with thick forests in high hills and deep hollows of the type common to parts of eastern Tennessee. The region surrounded by Chewacla Park in the south of the city contains sharp peaks and sudden drops of elevation as the 3.5 billion-year-old rock of the Appalachians meets the coastal plain.
Auburn sits near the divide between the Chattahoochee and Tallapoosa River watersheds. Auburn is drained by three main creek systems: in the south, by the Chewacla/Opintlocco Creek system; in the north, by the Saugahatchee Creek system; and in the extreme northern reaches of Auburn by Sandy Creek. The dividing line between the Chewacla and Saugahatchee watersheds roughly follows railroad line east-west through the center of town.
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