Added Oct 12, 2026 · 1813-1889
Chasing the Black Warrior Road
A thin line on an 1818 map led me to a Creek town, a vanished road, and a question I am still trying to answer: which way did the Black Warrior Road run through Brown's Valley?
History
The railroads, springs, covered bridges, and caverns of west Blount County, and the families who lived beside them.
Browse by Subject
Browse by Place
Browse by Name
Recently Added
Added Oct 12, 2026 · 1830-1851
The Silk Farm That Named the Mulberry Fork
A silk farm at Blount Springs that never made silk, the Goffe brothers who ran the resort, and the 1851 U.S. Supreme Court case that records how it ended.
Added Aug 19, 2026
Blue Hole, Waterfalls USA, and Country Boy Eddie
The 20th-century swimming hole and roadside attraction that outlived the Blount Springs resort.
Added Aug 9, 2026
Black History at Blount Springs
A Louisiana legislator's landmark 1884 visit, a 6,000-person picnic, a thriving Black landowning community next door, and the named and unnamed people whose labor ran the resort.
All History, in Order
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.
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.
The Lime Kilns of Blount Springs
An old kiln still standing near Highway 31 marks a real industrial history at Blount Springs -- a lime-and-quarry operation that cost two rail workers their lives and, per an 1885 state report, ran on convict labor.
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 […]
1813-1889
Chasing the Black Warrior Road
A thin line on an 1818 map led me to a Creek town, a vanished road, and a question I am still trying to answer: which way did the Black Warrior Road run through Brown's Valley?
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 […]
1830-1851
The Silk Farm That Named the Mulberry Fork
A silk farm at Blount Springs that never made silk, the Goffe brothers who ran the resort, and the 1851 U.S. Supreme Court case that records how it ended.
1830-1912
Col. J.F.B. Jackson: The Man Behind the Jackson House
Georgia sheriff, Confederate colonel, railroad builder, owner of the Jackson House at Blount Springs, Birmingham gas and street car pioneer, and the road superintendent who laid out Jefferson County's highways. His story, with a timeline and the newspaper pages behind it.
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 […]