A slight portion of the city extends into Dale and Henry counties. It had a population of 71, at the census , [ 2 ] making it Alabama's eighth-largest city by population and the 5th largest in Alabama by total area. It is near the state's southeastern corner, about 20 miles 32 km west of Georgia and 16 miles 26 km north of Florida. It is named after the biblical city where Joseph 's brothers threw him into a cistern and sold him into slavery in Egypt.
Dothan is the principal city of the Dothan, Alabama metropolitan area , which encompasses all of Geneva , Henry, and Houston counties; the small portion in Dale County is part of the Ozark Micropolitan Statistical Area. Coffee County and its Enterprise micropolitan area was originally combined as a statistical area with both Dothan and Ozark as well, but is now split off as its own statistical area by the US Census Bureau.
Together they form the Alabama portion of the Wiregrass region, of which Dothan is that portion's largest city.
The combined population of the entire Dothan metropolitan area in was , Since approximately one-fourth of the U. Between and , the region that is now Dothan was part of the colony of British West Florida. Most felt that the sandy soil common to this region would be unsuitable for farming, so they moved on. A crude stockade was constructed on the Barber Plantation, where settlers could take refuge whenever they felt threatened.
Gradually the area received more white settlers. This fort disappeared by the s, after the end of the Indian Wars in Alabama and Indian Removal in the s, when most members of the Five Civilized Tribes were forcibly taken to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Those members of the tribe who stayed in the southeast were considered to have given up their tribal memberships and became state and U. The first permanent white settlers consisted of nine families who moved into the area during the early s to harvest the abundant timber.
