Old Cahawba: Alabama's First Capital Lost to the Woods

When Alabama became a state in 1819, it needed a capital. A commission meeting at St. Stephens, the old territorial capital, chose a site where the Cahaba River flows into the Alabama River. There was no town there yet. The site was an undeveloped gift from President James Monroe to the new state, so while a statehouse was being built, the legislature met in temporary quarters in Huntsville. By 1820, Cahawba was a working state capital, with a two-story brick statehouse and streets laid out on a grid. But the town sat low, right where two rivers met, and it had a reputation for flooding and for being unhealthy. Opponents of the location used that reputation against it. In 1825, a major flood damaged part of the statehouse. In January 1826, the legislature voted to move the capital to Tuscaloosa. Within weeks, Cahawba was nearly abandoned. But the town didn't die yet. It remained the seat of Dallas County, and as river traffic improved and cotton boomed, Cahawba came back to life in the 1840s and 1850s. Wealthy residents built fine homes. One of them, the Crocheron house, built around 1843, is remembered today by the brick columns that still stand. The Civil War, floods and the loss of rail service brought the town's second decline. In 1865, a major flood swept through it again, and in 1866 the legislature moved the county seat to nearby Selma. Businesses and families followed. Within 10 years, people were dismantling the houses and hauling them away. By 1900, Cahawba was a ghost town. What remained was taken back by the land. Trees grew up in the streets and over foundations, and much of the old capital disappeared under the forest. In 1973, the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and today the Alabama Historical Commission preserves it as Old Cahawba Archaeological Park. Visitors walk the old streets past cemeteries, columns and foundations of the town that was once the capital of Alabama.