While the population was rising 44 Percent in 10 years, the total assessed value of the property in it rose 35.6 percent in five years. The 1995 figure of $1.18 billion rose to almost $1.6 billion in 2000.

“One feeds the other,” Burbage said. “People want to move into an area where property values are increasing, and property values increase as people move into an area.”

The hot spots

Not all the county grew at a steady 44 percent over the past 10 years. Helena, Alabaster, Pelham, Harpersville, Chelsea and Calera exceeded that rate, in some cases adding new residents more than twice as fast as the county overall.

Helena grew faster, at 163 percent, than any other municipality wholly in Shelby County. From a 1990 head count of 3,918 people, Helena exploded to a population of 10,296 in 2000.

Alabaster’s population soared to 22,619, up from 14,732 a decade ago. It remains the largest city entirely within Shelby County.

Calera grew 48 percent, to 3,158 people.

Officials in Alabaster, Helena and Calera all questioned the fullness of the population count.

Mayor George Roy said he thought the numbers would show Calera with more people. However, Roy can afford to say, “Wait till next time.”

In recent years, Calera’s commercial sector has boomed, with a new Sysco distribution center already open and a Wal-Mart SuperCenter scheduled to open later this year.

The city has 17 subdivisions under construction, with 4,000 homes planned.

To handle the growth, Calera is building two new water tanks and planning a sewer expansion, Roy said.

Alabaster’s residential growth has slacked off recently, City Administrator Jimmy Gould said, and city officials are concentrating on balancing it with commercial expansion.

“When you get a certain amount of people, you can support the commercial growth,” Gould said. “We feel like we’re at that point.”

The last decade brought big changes to Chelsea, which started the 1990s as an unincorporated community and became a town in 1996. By the time the census takers swarmed into the Narrows last year, Chelsea had attracted enough people to pass the population threshold of 2,000 and become a bona fide city.

Since 1990, Chelsea grew from 1,329 to 2,949 people, a 122 percent increase.

Mayor Earl Niven said he’ll be proud to start referring to the “City of Chelsea”, but he said he will not get in a rush to knock down the old signs welcoming newcomers to the “town.”

He said the new census numbers don’t include about 250 residents of Forest Parks, a subdivision Chelsea annexed in June – two months after the count.

The boom continues into the 21st century, with two more subdivisions of 700 homes in the planning stages.

“We certainly want to continue expanding commercially”, Niven said. “The commercial base and the residential base ought to grow hand in hand.”

Pelham’s rapid growth spurred major water projects expected to cost between $4 million and $5 million, Public Works Director Ken Holler said, including three new water tanks, connecting lines and a well, to be completed in the next two years.

Pelham Mayor Bobby Hayes is encouraging city police, firefighters and court employees to take Spanish classes to enable them to communicate with the city’s Hispanics, who now make up more than 6 percent of the city’s population, the highest concentration in any Shelby County municipality.

The 2,225 people in Indian Springs Village make the place a city, not a village. What’s more, it’s a city with a 102 percent growth rate. The population in 1990 was estimated at 1,100 said Councilwoman Patricia Crapet.

Mayor Gene Weingarten, however, said he’ll always consider the area a village. “If we got to be 100,000, we’d still think of ourselves as a village,” he said.

Harpersville Councilwoman Shirley Middleton said the town has grown, but not as much as the 2000 census figures indicate. The town’s population was undercounted in 1990, she said.

She predicted a healthy growth rate for Harpersville if the town succeeds in getting a grant to expand its sewer system.

The census shows Harpersville jumping from 772 residents to 1,620, a 110 percent increase.

Growth was more moderate in Columbiana, Montevallo, Wilsonville and Vincent, but all four areas showed population increases.

The county seat rose from 2,968 people to 3,316, a 12 percent increase.

Montevallo grew 14 percent, from 4,239 to 4,825, while Wilsonville expanded 31 percent, from 1,185 to 1,551. Vincent grew only 5 percent, from 1,767 to 1,853.

Shelby County remains among the whitest counties in Alabama, one of only 12 whose populations are more than 90 percent Caucasian. The county’s black population in 2000 was 10,608 or 7.4 percent.

But minority percentages are much higher in some individual cities. Montevallo’s black residents are 26 percent of the city’s population and Harpersville’s make up 29 percent. In Calera and Columbiana, blacks constitute 20 percent of the population.

Faster-growing areas such as Chelsea and Pelham recorded much smaller numbers of blacks. Chelsea’s black population was 1 percent of the total and Pelham’s was 4 percent.

Meanwhile, one area of Shelby County did not grow at all.

When Mayor Joe Fancher was a boy in Wilton more than 60 years ago, it was a different town, Fancher said.

“We had two hotels, three groceries, a barber shop, a post office and a meat market,” he said.

Fancher said he likes the quiet little town as it is today, “but we’ve got to make some money if we are going to stay in existence.”

Wilton, long the smallest and poorest municipality in prosperous Shelby County, shrank from 602 residents in 1990 to 580 in 2000.

Fancher found a silver lining in the town’s numbers dwindling while the rest of Shelby County enjoys boom times.

“Wilton is a bargain,” he said. “There’s no doubt you can buy a house in Wilton.”

Houses in the $50,000 to $60,000 price range are scarce in the rest of Shelby County, but that is still an above-average home in Wilton.

Fancher said he questions the census’ accuracy because some Wilton residents are on a Montevallo rural route, “and they might have been counted as part of Montevallo.”