Browse Items (963 total)

  • Collection: Alabama Places and Spaces

In 1975, The Muscle Shoals Board of Education conducted a needs assessment in conjunction with the Alabama State Department of Education to determine the business and industry employment needs in the Shoals area.  As a result of the needs assessment…

At its opening in 1970, the current MSMS building housed grades nine through twelve.  These grades remained in this building until 1999 when the new high school was built.  Middle school students previously attended McBride Middle School (now…

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The Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area (MSNHA) encompasses the six counties of North Alabama’s Tennessee River water basin, which includes Lauderdale County. An act of Congress established the Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area in 2009. Since…

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The Muscle Shoals Public Library is located at 1918 East Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals, Colbert County, next to Muscle Shoals High School. It contains approximately 52,000 volumes and offers DVD's, audiobooks, computers, and free wifi to the public.…

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The modest exterior of the one-story concrete structure at 3614 North Jackson Highway stands in deceptively stark contrast to the majesty of the music produced therein. The building once housed the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, where some of…

The Muscle Shoals Street Rod Festival is held every year in Spring Park, Tuscumbia, Alabama. It is a show of over 200 gleaming street rods and classics dating from 1972 and older. The festival is held on the 1st Sat. in June. Admission is free.

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Louis Rosenbaum, who moved to Florence from Douglas, Wyoming (in 1918) during the building of Wilson Dam and the TVA government plants, opened the Princess Theatre on September 1, 1919. He lived and worked in Florence for over forty three years. At…

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Nat "King" Cole (March 17. 1919 - February 15, 1965)

Born Nathaniel Adams Coles, on March 17, 1919, in Montgomery, Alabama, crooner Nat Cole was known for his smooth, soft baritone and easygoing nature. When Nat was four years old, his father,…

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The Nathchez Trace was once a path used by Native Americans in the region, including the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians. It was a popular path for pioneers and settlers to take as well. Once there was better navigation on the river, with the invention…

New Bethel Elementary is part of the Colbert County School System. New Bethel was built on its present site in 1915. The original structure was a two room wood constructed building. The original building burned in February, 1924. A new building was…

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The Tennessee Valley is filled with minerals, including the materials needed to produce nitrates. Nitrates can be used for many things, most importantly for TVA to help add nutrients to fertilizer. This helped  to increase crop production. Another…

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The Tennessee Valley is filled with minerals, including the materials needed to produce nitrates. Nitrates can be used for many things, most importantly for TVA to help add nutrients to fertilizer. This helped  to increase crop production. Another…

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The Tennessee Valley is filled with minerals, including the materials needed to produce nitrates. Nitrates can be used for many things, most importantly for TVA to help add nutrients to fertilizer. This helped  to increase crop production. Another…

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The Tennessee Valley is filled with minerals, including the materials needed to produce nitrates. Nitrates can be used for many things, most importantly for TVA to help add nutrients to fertilizer. This helped  to increase crop production. Another…

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The Nitrate Village No. 1 Historic District encompasses 112 family homes, two school buildings and one apartment complex, situated near the south bank of the Tennessee River in Sheffield, Alabama. The village was constructed in 1918 to house workers…

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The building that currently houses the North Alabama Abstract is known as the Clark Building. It is a part of the Colbert County Courthouse Square Historic District. The district is part of the National Register of Historic Places. This brick…

The North Alabama Birding Trail consists of fifty birding sites across the northern part of the state. There are currently 397 species known to have been seen along the trail. The fifty sites were carefully selected by a group of biologists, bird…

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The North Alabamian and Times, now the Standard and Times and the Colbert County Reporter, was published by Captain Arthur H. Keller (who may now be better known as Helen Keller's father). Local Jewish merchants routinely advertised with Captain…

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Northeast Alabama Community College (NACC) is a comprehensive, public two-year college within the Alabama Community College System; it is one of 12 junior colleges created by the Alabama State Legislature during the administration of Gov. George C.…

Northwest-Shoals Community College was formed in 1993 by the Alabama State Board of Education through the merger of Northwest Alabama Community College's Phil Campbell Campus and Shoals Community College. The merger was enacted in order to provide…

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O’Neal Hall was the “The Dormitory for Women” at the Florence State College, known now as the University of North Alabama. Completed and occupied by September 1st, 1913, the total cost of the building was $91,000. At its time, it was one of the…

Oak Grove Cemetery is located in Lauderdale County, Alabama. From Florence, Alabama, take Savannah Hwy west to Waterloo Rd. Turn west onto County Road 14, go approx. 17 miles. Turn right onto Bitter Branch Rd. Turn left onto County Road 121. The…

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Tuscumbia's Oakwood Cemetery was mapped and designated as a burial ground in General John Coffee's 1817 survey "Plan of a Town at Coldwater Spring," and the cemetery's oldest burial dates from 1821. Hundreds of military veterans are buried in…

Ococoposa, also known as Cold Water, was the site of a French trading post and was the home of Chickasaws and the Cherokees. The Chickasaw’s lived at the top of a hill near the Ocacapoosa spring. The Cherokees lived in the western portion of the…

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Alfred Huger Moses, founder and first mayor of Sheffield, Alabama (along with his brother, Mordecai) was the owner of the Sheffield Land, Iron and Coal Company, located on Montgomery Avenue.

Oka Kapassa festival is a festival held every year to remember the Native American presence in Tuscumbia. The festival is allows visitors to learn about Native American culture both past and present during. The festival is free to the public on both…

The town of Saint Florian, Alabama, has a strong German heritage. It was established in 1872 by a Catholic priest named J. H. Hueser. Hueser, the director of the Homeland Security of Cincinnati, Ohio, purchased over two thousand acres of land in…

Courthouse Annex (Old Athens Post Office)
The Old Main Post Office in Athens, Alabama was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Also known as Washington Street Courthouse Annex, the Neoclassical building was constructed in 1933 by the Works Progress Administration. The…

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The origins of Leighton's Old Brick Presbyterian Church can be traced back to 1812, when traveling minister Carson P. Reed staged a two-week revival in the Brick community. 45 men baptized during the revival were inspired to establish a congregation…

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According to church tradition, Leighton's Old Brick Presbyterian Church building was constructed in 1828, although architectural evidence suggests a later date during the 1830s or 1840s. Its distinctive, kiln-fired exterior bricks and sun-dried…

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The Old Confederate fort in Florence was constructed by Confederate forces under General Daniel Ruggles in 1862. General Ruggles was born in Massachusetts and graduated from West Point married into a wealthy Virginia family. After the fall of Fort…

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The old Lexington Post Office (circa 1940) had fallen into dis-repair and disuse after the new post office was built. Several businesses attempted to make the space usable without major updates.

When Dr. Paul Corfman, who grew up in North Alabama,…

Old Main
After the state awarded East Alabama Male College its charter on February 7, 1856, the Board of Trustees set about securing funds to build an administrative and educational building. The trustees initially allocated $25,000 for the facility, but the…

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The 1976 NR nomination documents a 400 foot unpaved section of the original Natchez Trace not covered by the Natchez Trace Parkway. The original Natchez Trace was a network of trails established by Native Americans that stretched roughly from what…

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In 1835, William Young and his brother Isaac Smoot, a contractor, bought a lot on what is today the corner of Fourth and Main Streets in Tuscumbia for the purpose of opening a carriage factory. They constructed a large red brick building with a porch…

Old State Bank
Constructed in 1833, the Old State Bank in Decatur, Alabama, served as the Decatur Branch of the State Bank of Alabama. The Alabama General Assembly passed legislation to create the State Bank of Alabama in 1830. Formed in Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa…

Old Town Cemetery
Old Town Cemetery is the earliest know cemetery in Athens. Records indicate that the first burials date from the 1820s and continue through the mid-1800s, with some burials past 1900. Many markers in the cemetery are sunken below ground, while others…

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The water tower has served as a landmark for the city of Florence since its construction in 1889 by the Jeter and Boardman Gas and Water Association. The stone buttressed masonry tower is seventy feet high and topped by a 282,000 gallon cast iron…

Opelika Baptist Church established a school in 1873. Local members of the denomination opened the Baptist Female College inside Opelika Baptist Church and named Professor J.J. Langham as principal. It later moved to a new two-story brick building…

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The first major industry in Lee County and the first textile mill in Opelika. It opened in 1900. Today, it is most well known as the backdrop for the 1979 film "Norma Rae" about a woman who become involved in the Labor Union Activities at the North…

In 1911, the Alabama State Legislature allocated a disbursement to fund a public high school in every county in the state. Opelika solicited private funds to meet the state in the middle, and Lee County’s first stand-alone high school, Opelika High…

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In 1969, U.S. District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson ordered the Opelika to desegregate its school system. Observing that African Americans comprised 30 percent of the students enrolled in Opelika city schools, Johnson demanded that all of Opelika’s…

After Opelika’s 1854 town incorporation, citizens concerned with the educational prospects of the hamlet’s youth opened several private academies. Two of the early private schools were the Opelika Male School and the Opelika Female Academy, both…

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In 1959, Henry G. Clift High School relocated to a new facility at 1206 Denson Drive and rechristened itself Opelika High School, the institutional name it bore from 1911 to 1918. U.S. District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson gave the Opelika city…

On November 23, 1869, Opelika citizens petitioned the City Council to create a public high school. A Board of Trustees formed, and in 1873 the Alabama State Legislature empowered the city government to collect taxes to subsidize public education. The…

The city of Opelika, Alabama was incorporated on February 9, 1854. Because of the many rail lines that snaked through the city, warehouses were built during the war to store cotton and other goods. When General Lovell Harrison Rousseau’s men…

This historic marker is located at the intersection of Tennessee St and Seminary St, Florence, AL.

The text on the side one of the marker reads: "This marks the site of the pioneering music company of Florence Alabama Music Enterprises (FAME), a…

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Orradio produced magnetic tape. Major John Herbert Orr founded Orradio in 1949 using information given to him by German scientists during World War II. This business became the first producer of commercially available audio, video, and computer tape.…

Overton Farm is one of the earliest remaining pioneer sites in Northwest Alabama. The farm is located four miles northwest of Hodges. Abner Overton, who was a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, visited Alabama in 1815. During his visit to Alabama, he…

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P.B. Swoopes Dry Cleaners was a business run by P.B. Swoopes in Sheffield Alabama. Swoopes was a graduate of Sheffield school. He would go on to open his dry cleaning business in downtown Sheffield. Swoopes started his dry cleaning business in 1927.…
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