Cahawba, AL
Cahawba was once Alabama's state capital (1820-1826) and a thriving antebellum river town. It became a ghost town shortly after the Civil War. Today it is an important archaeological site and a place of picturesque ruins.
As early as 4,000 years ago Indians occupied Cahawba, and the Spanish explorer DeSoto may have visited a large Indian village located there in 1540.
In 1819 the state of Alabama was carved out of the wilderness. Cahawba, its capital city, was an undeveloped town site, a gift from President James Monroe to the new state. Consequently, Alabama's legislature was forced to find temporary accommodations in Huntsville until a statehouse could be built. By 1820, however, Cahawba was a fully functioning state capital.
Cahawba's low elevation gave it a reputation for flooding and an unhealthy atmosphere. Those opposed to the selection of Cahawba as the capital used this reputation to persuade the legislature to move the capital to Tuscaloosa in 1826. Within weeks Cahawba was nearly abandoned.
The flooding had been greatly exaggerated by Cahawba's opponents, so the town recovered and reestablished itself as a social and commercial center. Cahawba became the major distribution point for cotton shipped down the Alabama River from the fertile "black belt" to the port of Mobile. The addition of a railroad line in l859 triggered a building boom. On the eve of the Civil War, more than 3,000 people called Cahawba home.
Cahawba's glory days were again short-lived. During the Civil War, the Confederate government seized Cahawba's railroad, tore up the iron rails and used them to extend a nearby railroad. A lice-infested prison for 3,000 captured Union soldiers was established in the center of town. In 1865 a flood inundated the town, and in 1866 the county seat was removed to nearby Selma. Businesses and families followed. Within 10 years, even the houses were being dismantled and moved.
During Reconstruction, the abandoned courthouse became a meeting place for freemen seeking new political power. Cahawba became the "Mecca of the Radical Republican Party". A new rural community of former slave families replaced the old urban center. These families turned the vacant town blocks into two-acre fields.
Soon, even this community disappeared. By 1900 most of Cahawba's buildings had burned, collapsed, or been dismantled. Few structures survived past 1930, but the town was not unincorporated until 1989. By that time, only fishermen and hunters walked the town's abandoned streets.
Today, nature has reclaimed Old Cahawba, but historians and archaeologists from the Alabama Historical Commission are working hard to uncover Cahawba's historic past and to create a full time interpretive park. Visitors are welcome at Old Cahawba. Enjoy the wildflowers. Take the time to roam the abandoned streets, view the moss-covered ruins, talk with an archaeologist, read the interpretive signs, and contemplate Cahaw
The site of Old Cahawba lies at the confluence of the Alabama and
Cahaba Rivers. From downtown Selma, take Highway 22 west 8.6 miles.
Turn onto Country Road 9 and follow this quiet country road another 5
miles to Cahawba.
Kirk-View Farm
In 1866, Shortly after the Civil War and a severe flood, The county seat was moved from Cahaba to Selma. Resident rapidly abandoned the town. Many home where dismantled and reassembled elsewhere.
Despite the trend, returning Confederate veteran Samuel McCordy Kirkpatrick and his wife Sarah purchased a large brick house and outlying structures here on the northern edge of town. They aquired many of the vacated town lots and consolidated them into a large farm. For nearly seventy years, three generations of Kirkpatricks managed a model farm here called "Kirk-View".
The Kirkpatrick home burned in 1935. The structure you see today is one of two located behind the house and was orginally constructed as slave quarters.
Crocheron Columns
The Crocheron's were from Staten Island, New York. Richard Connor Crocheron arrived in town about 1837 to help run the family store.
He travelled north for his bride in 1843 after building her this brick home. The back wall ajoined the brick store that had been built by his uncle 20 years earlier. The front porch has a magnificent view of two rivers. The columns you see today where once part of a side portico.
The family owned a line of ocean-going steamers and they escaped the summer heat by returning North each year. When his wife died in 1850, R.C was heart-broken. He sold his property, freed his slaves, and returned to New York with his three little children.
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See the old National Marker placed in 1921 by the Alabama Centennial
Commission. Ironically enough, the large stone marker was erected at
the same time most of Cahawba's few remaining structures were being
dismantled for salvage material.
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Take the self-guided nature trail to Clear Creek through the woods of
Cahawba's Town Commons, a section of land reserved for everyone's use.
During the Civil War when provisions ran low, the plants and trees of
the commons provided one-stop, shopping for residents' needs. Pine,
scuppernong, persimmon, prickly pear, sumac and other vegetation were
utilized for a variety of practical uses that are explained along the
trail.
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No visit is complete without seeing the Crocheron Columns, all that
remains of the Crocheron mansion, where Confederate General Nathan
Bedford Forest and Union General James Wilson discussed an exchange of
prisoners captured during the Battle of Selma.
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At the bluff overlooking the Alabama River, see if you can identify the
foundations of Cahaba Federal Prison. It's in the same location that
Governor Bibb wanted to construct a permanent statehouse upon the site
of a Native American mound (the earthen mound was removed and used to
help construct the Marion to Cahawba railroad in 1858).
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Cahawba's "New" Cemetery, created in 1851, reveals much about the diversity of Cahawba's antebellum community A self-guided walking tour brochure can be found at the welcome center. |
While standing on Arch Street, can you make out the fact that the
concourse was originally a ditch surrounded by a palisade with an
Indian mound in the center -- at the site where Governor Bibb wanted to
put the capitol building?
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