Located on Interstate 85 between Auburn and Montgomery, E.V. Smith Research Center is the most visible agricultural facility in Alabama. The only facility named for a former AAES director—Edwin V. Smith who served at Auburn from 1929 to 1972—it is also the largest and most comprehensive with research units in beef cattle, horticulture, plant breeding, field crops and biosystems engineering.

In 1978, a 3,200-acre tract of land located between Auburn and Montgomery was dedicated in honor of the director of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station from 1951 to 1972 as the E.V. Smith Research Center and field work in agronomy, horticulture and beef and dairy cattle was relocated from the Auburn campus to the center. About half of the land was designated for a new plant science unit, another 350 acres for agronomy experiments on Alabama’s major row and forage crops with special emphasis on soybean research and about 200 acres for horticulture research. Bordering the plant science unit was an animal science unit where beef cattle nutrition, beef cattle breeding and dairy cattle management facilities provided modern installations to research a variety of livestock questions.