An Autumn Day at the Old Home Town
A 1915 dispatch from Blount Springs, published in the Birmingham Age-Herald less than a year after the resort's second hotel fire.
History
Railroad depots, mineral springs, and the caverns underneath it all — the research archive behind the name.
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A Near Birmingham Resort - Blount Springs
A 1921 case for Blount Springs' revival, published in the Birmingham Age-Herald - the resort's history, its assets, and its two occupied graves.
1800-1837
Black Warrior Road & the Creek Removal
Before the railroad or any settlement, this stretch of hills was Upper Creek (Muskogee) territory. In 1813-14 the Creek War […]
1815-Present
Blount Springs
A 19th-century mineral-springs resort, internationally known in its day.
1819-Present
Nectar
Nectar is the fourth core community in West Blount’s coverage area, alongside Hayden, Smoke Rise, and Blount Springs. The settlement […]
1820s-Present
From Rockland to Hayden
Long before it was Hayden, this was Rockland - settled starting in the 1820s by families whose names still fill […]
1827-1911
Philip Henson: The Southern Union Spy from Blount Springs
Philip Henson was born December 28, 1827, in Blount Springs. By the time he died in 1911, he’d spied on […]
1832-1912
Col. J.F.B. Jackson: The Man Behind the Jackson House
Joseph Franklin Ballenger Jackson - Col. J.F.B. Jackson to everyone who knew him at Blount Springs - was born January […]
1844-1920
Mary Gordon Duffee: The Hermit of Duffee’s Mountain
Two of the letters already told on this site - the naming of Ricetown, and part of what’s known about […]
1861-1865
Mary Gordon Duffee and the Missing Confederate Money
Mary Gordon Duffee was about seventeen in 1861, the year her three older brothers - William Henry, George Gillespie, and […]
1867-1872
Building the L&N Through the Gap
The Civil War largely bypassed this part of Blount County - the closest action was a Union cavalry raid that […]
1869-1934
Smith Ford and the Vaughn Bridge
In 1932, an old man named B.H. Vaughn wrote a letter to the Southern Democrat remembering the hard years after […]
1878
The Conspiracy to Rob the Train
In mid-July 1878, a stranger calling himself Sherwood approached W.C. Reid - a Blount County man living near Reid’s Gap, […]
1880-1915
Reid’s Gap
An L&N Railroad depot that anchored a 2,600-acre orchard operation until the line moved on in 1914-15 - and whose ground resurfaced in 2026.
1888-1908
Ricetown: Three Letters, Twenty Years
Ricetown is a small community west of Blount Springs, built around a chapel and a cemetery that’s been receiving burials […]
1895
The Gray Goose Saloon
In 1895, a whiskey shop called the “Gray Goose” - set up two or three years earlier by John Franklin […]
1900-1929
The First Mountain Brook Was in Blount County
There’s a Mountain Brook Store in Blount County today, a small country store that has nothing to do with the […]
1901-1905
Oil Fever at Reid’s Gap
A well drilled at Reid’s Gap around 1891 had sat plugged and abandoned for a decade - the original prospectors […]