In the original numbering of state roads in the mid-1920s, the highway that would become SR 5 had several numbers.
SR 6 was the highway from Mobile north via
Thomasville to
Selma.
SR 35 split from SR 6 at
Safford and ran northeast near
Woodstock, where traffic could continue to Birmingham on
SR 2 (US 11).
SR 43 split from
SR 8 (US 78) at
Jasper, taking traffic from Montgomery via US 78 to
Phil Campbell. SR 43 also traveled southwest from Jasper to
SR 33 at the village of Bankston, though the exact route had not been defined by 1927. From there, travelers could continue north on part of SR 5 to
Florence, and
SR 50 to the Tennessee state line, where the road became
Tennessee State Route 6 towards
Lawrenceburg and
Nashville. By late 1928, a large renumbering of highways had been carried out. The new SR 5 stretched from Mobile to Tennessee via Birmingham and
Florence, and included several former routes: most of SR 6, all of SR 35, most of SR 43, part of SR 5, and all of SR 50. The remainders of SR 35 and SR 43 became parts of
SR 22 and
SR 18. The old SR 5 was split among several routes. The two halves of the new SR 5 were linked between somewhere near Woodstock and Jasper by a concurrency with
SR 7 (US 11) and
SR 4 (US 78) via Birmingham. US 43 was added to the route south of
Thomasville and north of Phil Campbell in 1933 or 1934. In between those two, SR 5 used a shorter route, mainly SR 13. Except for minor relocations and widenings, SR 5 remained the same until the 1950s. Around 1950, a new highway, running southeast from SR 5 at
Haleyville to local roads at
Natural Bridge, was added to the state highway system as
SR 195. Maintenance by the Alabama Highway Department was extended southeast from Natural Bridge to SR 5 near Jasper by 1957. In that year, in the renumbering of the state highways of Alabama, substantial changes were made to the route of SR 5. Both portions of it that had been concurrencies with US 43 – south of Thomasville and north of Phil Campbell – became SR 13, which essentially became the unsigned partner to US 43 across the state. SR 13 used a shorter highway between Bankston and Haleyville, joining SR 5 at Natural Bridge and making the north end of SR 5 an overlap with SR 13. US 43 has never been moved to this route. In addition, SR 5 and SR 195 were swapped between Jasper and Haleyville, giving SR 5 a more direct route that had just been paved. This removed almost half of the original SR 5, leaving it a reflected C-shaped route, with both ends of connecting with US 43, and its eastmost point in Birmingham. In 2020, the intersection of SR 5 and CR 58 in
Brent was converted to a
roundabout. An
urban legend claims that SR 5 near
Lynn is haunted by the spirit of a teenage girl who was killed by a truck driver. ==Major intersections==