Cahawba, Alabama
Poor Cahawba was once the capital of Alabama before its location led to it being regarded as having bad air, believed to be the cause of sickness in antebellum days. Located at the confluence of the Cahawba and Alabama Rivers it was also susceptible to flooding on a seasonal basis, and after a severe flood damaged the statehouse in 1825 the capital was moved to Tuscaloosa. The town, which had been created specifically to house the state’s government, turned away from politics and towards industry.
Its location on two major rivers made it a collection and distribution center for cotton which was then shipped to the port at Mobile, Alabama. In 1859 the railroad reached Cahawba and with it came a brief boom in construction and new residents. By the time Alabama seceded from the Union in 1861 it contained a population of about 3,000 residents, and was a social center for the plantation owners and cotton merchants of central Alabama. During the war the city was the home of Castle Morgan, a converted warehouse which was used to hold Union prisoners of war.
During the last months of the war, in February 1865, one of the seasonal floods which had caused the town to lose its status as the state capital struck again. The city had lost its railroad connection early in the war when the Confederate government had seized the rails for use in another road, and reaching the city with aid was difficult. The hard times which followed the flood of 1865 were exacerbated by Reconstruction, when many of the buildings which made up the city were abandoned by their owners, and torn down. Empty town blocks were converted to fields for planting by newly freed slaves.
Near the end of the nineteenth century most of the town’s lots were purchased by a former slave and nearly all of the remaining buildings were torn down and the materials shipped for use in Mobile. What few buildings remained were abandoned and the town was effectively empty. The remaining buildings became mostly dilapidated and were reduced to a few remaining structures by the 1930s. All were in disrepair.
The site remained incorporated as a town until 1989, but no census since 1880 records any residents. Today the site is a State Historic Site and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since the early 1970s. Today Cahawba’s ruins include some streets and a few buildings, and some antebellum cemeteries, all that remains of what started out as Alabama’s first capital city. It is maintained by the Alabama Historical Commission.