938 Area Code – Huntsville, Alabama: Location, Time Zone & History

Area code 938 is Alabama's first overlay, laid on top of 256 to keep pace with number demand across the northern and northeastern part of the state. The Alabama Public Service Commission announced it in 2009, and it entered service on July 10, 2010, with mandatory ten-digit local dialing across the shared 256/938 numbering plan area taking effect a month earlier, on June 5, 2010.

The overlay's territory centers on Huntsville, long nicknamed "Rocket City" after Wernher von Braun's rocket team relocated to Redstone Arsenal in 1950 and led development of the Jupiter and Redstone rockets. That legacy still defines the local economy, where aerospace and defense work at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and Redstone Arsenal sits alongside biotechnology, software, and manufacturing employers.

• Huntsville anchors the numbering plan area as its primary and largest city.
• Decatur, Gadsden, Florence, and Anniston round out the cities served.
• 256/938 covers 23 Alabama counties in the Central time zone.

Because 938 numbers are interchangeable with 256 numbers across the same footprint, callers in Huntsville and the surrounding cities dial with either code depending on when their line was assigned, a pattern that has become routine as northern Alabama's population, estimated near 1.86 million across the shared plan area, keeps growing.