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?
Bridges & Infrastructure
Covered bridges, fords, roads, and the people who built and crossed them.
History
Zelma Clyde Tidwell, Blount County’s Bridge Builder
Nearly every covered bridge Blount County ever built came out of one man’s career. Zelma Clyde Tidwell was born February […]
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 […]
1933
How the Joy Bridge Became the Swann Bridge
Most everyone in Blount County knows Swann Bridge is worth talking about - three hundred and twenty-four feet of Town […]
1967
The Unsolved Burning of the Standridge Bridge
It happened on a Thursday night in November 1967, on a bend in the Locust Fork east of Hayden that […]
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 […]
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.