The state capital for five years, emptied by the river it was built on
Alabama’s first permanent state capital, from 1820 to 1825, built where the Cahaba river runs into the Alabama. The site had one flaw and it never went away: it flooded, season after season. The legislature gave up and moved the capital to Tuscaloosa in 1826, the town hung on as the seat of Dallas County until another major flood in 1865, and then that moved to Selma too. Losing the courthouse took the businesses and the jobs with it, and the people followed. What stands now is street grid, foundations and cemetery, on ground that was the centre of the state twice over.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours of here.
