Welcome to Downtown Cahawba

Downtown Cahawba's main street was lined with tightly packed offices, stores, and hotels near the Alabama River steamboat landings, making it prime real estate. Vine Street was 80 feet wide with brick sidewalks, and a town ordinance required lot owners to plant shade trees between the sidewalks and the road. About 1900, abandoned but standing structures included law offices, Saltmarsh Hall where public celebrations were held, the Dallas County Courthouse, the Dallas County Office Building, and an artesian well in the center of the street. Drilled for public use, the well supplied water during the Civil War to thousands of prisoners of war held in a nearby warehouse. Although the ornamental wellhead disappeared decades ago, the old well's location remained identifiable near the intersection of Vine and First North Streets. Cahawba's earliest merchants also imported fast-growing chinaberry trees to shade the sidewalks, and their descendants still survive along the abandoned downtown street.

Alabama · United States