Day 3 in Dixie: Cahawba, BBQ and Monroeville

We said good-bye to the Red Bluff Cottage B&B in Montgomery today.  Barry and Bonnie were very nice there, they grew on us.  Funny how very different people can get along given some time.

Our first destination was out to Selma again.  In fact, past Selma, a little further west to Cahawba.  If you try to look for this on the map, you won't find it.  It's a ghost town.  Started around 1810-1820, it was the first capital of Alabama until 1825, then remained thriving right up to the Civil War, when there was a lot of building in the 1850s.  It took a precipitous plunge after the war, being essentially emptied within a few year.

It speaks a lot to the climate of Alabama that there is virtually nothing left of the town.  They've done a nice job putting placards up showing places where once there were sumptuous homes.  The forest has re-claimed all of it.

During the Civil War, Cahawba was the site of an infamous Confederate prisoner camp called "Castle Morgan".  Within a 200 x 125 foot rectangle, 3000 Union prisoners were held for about 2 years (actually, the space looked bigger than that, but still too small for 3000 people) through the heat of summer and the cold of winter, outside with little cover.  After their liberation, the prisoners went to Vicksburg where they took a steamship north on the Mississippi, the Sultana.  It blew up en route killing many of the prisoners.  Maddy's ancestral uncle was one of the prisoners/casualties.

On the way back into Selma, we saw a roadside BBQ place called Hancock's and had lunch there.  It was a real "local" place, with a very mixed assortment crammed into a small space, including:
-6 guys in various forms of law enforcement in jeans/t-shirts/firearms happily eating BBQ
-a large (in both senses) African-American family also happily eating.
-two Japanese guys wearing Honda jumpsuits, clearly from the Honda plant nearby.  They must have thought they were in outer space.
-various forms of farmer
The BBQ was average - by no means a bad effort.  The atmosphere was awesome.  Harry's drinking lots and lots of sweet tea.

We then took country routes about 80 miles to Monroeville.  You can drive nice and fast on those routes, with the red clay landscape looming out at you.  Much better than the highway!

Monroeville was home to Harper Lee, and the courthouse has some nice exhibits of her life and of Truman Capote.  The courthouse was the model for that in To Kill a Mockingbird, and they have preserved the old courtroom as such.  It was quite a special afternoon seeing it.

Maddy outside the Red Bluff Cottage in Montgomery.

All that remains of a lavish mansion in Cahawba.

Maddy at the junctions of the Cahawba and Alabama rivers.

Site of Castle Morgan at Cahawba.

Hancock's BBQ in Selma AL

Monroeville Courtroom.

Outside the Monroeville Courthouse.