This year begins a three-year celebration of the upcoming Alabama Bicentennial in 2019. For three years, we will celebrate Alabama Places (2017), Alabama People (2018), and Alabama Stories (2019). To help celebrate, Dr. John Kvach (History Professor at UAH) has written several blog posts about several different locations on our North Alabama Geocaching Passport. The passport can be found at http://www.northalabama.org/content/uploads/general_content/2015AMLAGeocachingPassport.pdf. Happy reading and hunting for those geocaches!
1818 Farms - Mooresville, Alabama
As we begin to celebrate 200 years of Alabama statehood realize that some towns will be celebrating a bit earlier than the rest of us. Mooresville, Alabama, stands testament to Alabama’s rich history, the value of historic preservation, and why history can be more fun than just reading books. A small group of families incorporated the town of Mooresville in late 1818 and many of these same families still live in town today.
1818 Farms has seen a great deal of history past by it. Two United States presidents, Andrew Johnson and James A. Garfield, have walked its fields and Pony Express riders have ridden past its barns. Located just south of “downtown” Mooresville, 1818 Farms shares a common story with many large farms and plantations in Alabama. Produce, cash crops, and livestock fed nineteenth-century families and helped them sell goods to nearby Decatur and Huntsville. Pony Express riders gave way to telegraph wires that then gave way to telephone cables. Old dirty roads became paved state roads that then became interstate highways. All during this time 1818 Farms stood as a reminder of what had been.
This changed when Americans, eager to return to their roots, began to buy local foods, yearn for handmade craft goods, and enjoyed the “Farm to Table” experience. Suddenly, the old farm perked up and people wanted to visit it along with the quaintness of Mooresville.
Today as you drive by Mooresville in your car on a modern highway you rarely notice the distance and time the small town is from other places. Image when the average pace of life was the speed of a person walking or a horse pulling a wagon. Mooresville suddenly seems much further away from the rest of the world and 1818 Farms becomes a reminder of how Americans once lived closer to the land. Enjoy your time getting back to the basics of small town America!
