COURTLAND – LEIGHTON ______CULTURAL LANDSCAPE INVENTORY & ASSESSMENT ______Prepared by the MTSU Center for Historic Preservation
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________________________________________________________________________ COURTLAND – LEIGHTON ______________________________________ CULTURAL LANDSCAPE INVENTORY & ASSESSMENT ______________________________________ Prepared by the MTSU Center for Historic Preservation ___________________________________________________ Submitted to the National Park Service, National Trails Intermountain Region, Santa Fe, NM November 2018 ________________________________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS This report was prepared by: Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1 Amy Kostine, Trail of Tears Project Coordinator Management Summary .............................................................................. 1 Savannah Grandey, Fieldwork Coordinator Historical Overview .................................................................................... 1 Dr. Carroll Van West, Director Scope and Methodology ............................................................................ 3 Study Boundaries ....................................................................................... 4 Summary of Findings ................................................................................. 4 Landscape Historical Context ........................................................................... 5 1814-1823: Growth in the Tennessee River Valley..................................... 5 1824-1836: Envisioning and Building the Tuscumbia, Courtland, & Decatur Railroad ................................................................... 10 1837-1838: The Trail of Tears .................................................................. 17 1839-1865: The Rise of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad & Its Destruction During the Civil War ............................................ 26 Contributing Features & Existing Conditions ................................................ 30 Spatial OrganiZation of the Courtland-Leighton Corridor .......................... 30 Vegetation ................................................................................................ 31 Buildings & Structures .............................................................................. 33 Analysis and Recommendations .................................................................... 48 Endnotes .......................................................................................................... 51 Table of Contents COURTLAND – LEIGHTON CULTURAL LANDSCAPE STUDY INTRODUCTION provides identification and analysis of buildings and structures that witnessed the forced migrations and comprised the MANAGEMENT SUMMARY viewshed of migrants. In 2017, the Center for Historic Preservation (CHP) at Middle Tennessee State HISTORICAL OVERVIEW University (MTSU) and the National Trails Intermountain Region (NTIR) of the National Park Service (NPS) entered into an agreement for the completion of a The present-day sites of Courtland, Town cultural landscape inventory and assessment for the Trail of Tears National Creek, and Leighton, Alabama, were part of Historic Trail segment from Courtland to Leighton in Alabama. This study identifies a Chickasaw land cession mandated by the characteristics, features, and associations that make Courtland and the linear 1814 Treaty of Fort Jackson at the end of the corridor defined by the tracks and right-of-way of the historic Tuscumbia, first Creek War and the Turkey Town Treaty Courtland, & Decatur Railroad (from Courtland through Town Creek to Leighton) a of 1816, as well as Cherokee land required historically significant landscape of the Trail of Tears (according to National by the Treaty of Chickasaw Council House in Register criteria). The report also documents the landscape history, existing 1816. The Treaty of Fort Jackson demanded conditions, and integrity analysis within the study area. more than 21 million acres of Creek land as well, opening much of present-day Alabama In 1836, a detachment of Creek traveled through the Courtland-to-Leighton to settlement. The result was an enormous corridor on their forced removal to Indian Territory. Two years later, three population boom. Emigrants and the people detachments of Cherokee families, enslaved people, and a small number of Creek they enslaved poured into the territory, primarily traveled by way of a water route on the Trail of Tears, traversed especially attracted to the fertile river Courtland, Town Creek, and Leighton via the Tuscumbia, Courtland, & Decatur bottoms of the Tennessee River Valley and Railroad for a leg of their journey, after low water levels and the treacherous encouraged by high cotton prices. By 1820, Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River forced them to land. This report focuses nonnatives numbered 127,000 people, an on the linear corridor, defined by the tracks of the rail line from Courtland to increase of over 1000 percent over the Leighton, within the broader context of Courtland’s character-defining elements previous decade. that date to the time of the Cherokee removal. Prior relevant documents concerning the planning and historical significance of this Trail of Tears landscape First called Ebenezer, Courtland’s growing that inform this study include the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail population justified incorporation in 1819, Comprehensive Management and Use Plan created in 1992 and the exhaustive when a federal court and land office were report North Alabama’s Tuscumbia, Courtland, and Decatur Railroad and Its Role located in the town, followed by a post office During Cherokee Emigration/Removal Beginning in 1837, written by several in 1825. As the market economy, especially members of the Alabama Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association and funded by the cultivation of cotton, spread westward, so the NPS Challenge Cost Share Program in 2009. Most recently, Amy Kostine’s did the transportation corridors that 2015 Reconnaissance, Documentation, and Assessments of Historic supported it. Completed in 1832, the Buildings/Structures Associated with the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail Tuscumbia, Courtland, & Decatur Railroad Introduction COURTLAND – LEIGHTON CULTURAL LANDSCAPE STUDY 1 Figure 1. Map shows the Courtland-Leighton study corridor. The blue line indicates the location of the Tuscumbia, Courtland, & Decatur Railroad, which was used by three detachments of Cherokee in 1838. Basemap courtesy of ESRI. Introduction COURTLAND – LEIGHTON CULTURAL LANDSCAPE STUDY 2 Company was one of the first railroad lines built in the South, constructed to predominantly that of a small 19th- and early provide a rapid and reliable mode of transportation around the treacherous Muscle 20th-century local trade center rooted in the Shoals on the Tennessee River, which often hindered steamboat travel. surrounding plantation economy.”1 The railroad passes through the towns of Town Creek and Leighton before SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY reaching Tuscumbia. Town Creek, originally named Jonesboro after settler William Jones, developed as a railway town. The layout of Town Creek speaks to the This cultural landscape report grew out of centrality of the railroad, with the commercial buildings lined perpendicular to the previous partnerships between the National tracks, as opposed to the traditional town square plan found in Courtland. Trails Intermountain Region (NTIR) of the National Park Service (NPS) and the Center Westward of Town Creek, the railroad enters Leighton, formerly known as for Historic Preservation at Middle Crossroads because of its siting at the intersection of a road that ran from the Tennessee State University (MTSU), namely Tennessee River to Tuscaloosa and one that ran from Huntsville to Tuscumbia. the Reconnaissance, Documentation, and After the arrival of the railroad, Leighton became a shipping center for cotton. Assessments of Historic Buildings/Structure Associated with the Trail of Tears National The Tuscumbia, Courtland, & Decatur Railroad was reportedly the only railroad Historic Trail published in 2015. That report used to remove Southeastern Indian nations on the Trail of Tears. The Ridge Party inventories all pre-1838 buildings/structures (Pro-Treaty Party) led by General Nathaniel Smith, the Deas detachment led by within two blocks of the designated trail in Lt. Edward Deas, and the Whitely detachment boarded train cars at different times urban areas and all pre-1838 buildings within in 1837 and 1838 in order to reach Tuscumbia and continue west to Indian sightline of the designated trail in rural areas. Territory. From Decatur, the rail line passed nearby Pond Spring (the plantation of Though the report includes a discussion of Joseph Wheeler), followed by the towns of Courtland, Town Creek, and Leighton, various routes taken by the different before reaching Tuscumbia. detachments on the Trail of Tears (as understood in 2015), the water route, on The Memphis & Charleston Railroad bought the line in 1850. After the majority of which migrants detoured to avoid Muscle the line was destroyed during the Civil War, it was rebuilt throughout the late 1860s. Shoals and boarded the Tuscumbia, The line became part of the Southern Railway System in 1894 and is now Courtland, & Decatur Railroad and passed controlled by Norfolk Southern (created by the merging of Norfolk & Western and from Decatur through Courtland to the Southern in 1982). Tuscumbia at a distance of approximately 45 miles, was not thoroughly investigated. This Present-day U.S.