В Алабаме торжественно отметили 200-летнюю историю первой в штате дороги Байлер

A commemoration of Alabama’s 200-year-old historic Byler Road is scheduled at 10 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, northeast of Haleyville in Winston County. The event, one of several scheduled this year, is set for the Pebble Community Center. The address is 100 County Road 3423, Haleyville. Byler Road is also being revived as a tourism destination. Sept. 17 marks completion of the setting of 43 historical markers along the route. Eldridge, in Walker County, has scheduled a celebration at 9 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 7. It’s named for Eldridge Mallard, Byler’s son-in-law. There’s an Eldridge Mallard Toll Booth marker in Eldridge. “It is concurrent with our annual Heritage Day,” Eldridge Mayor Don Tucker said. The Sept. 17 and Nov. 7 events are not the only planned recognitions for The Byler Road. Looney’s Tavern theater near Double Springs is producing a one-act play, “Buffalo Trail to Byler Road,” written by Emmy-award scriptwriter Brad Bailey, who grew up Double Springs. The play is set to open this fall. Gov. William Wyatt Bibb signed legislation creating the Byler Road in December 1819 just days after Alabama became the nation’s 22nd state. It was a toll road. The Byler Road begins a little northeast of St. Florian in Lauderdale County, crosses the Tennessee River into Colbert County, and continues south through Lawrence, Franklin, Winston, Walker, and Fayette counties. The 12-feet-wide trail was built by clearing trees and other impediments along what may have been a prehistoric animal trail and later used by humans who first occupied the North American continent. “For several thousand years, massive animals, herd animals such as the woodland bison, would have created the trail,” said Rickey Butch Walker, a historian and Alabama author who has published books on Native American and early Alabama history. “Indians then used the roads and settlers came along and used it,” said Walker, a retired educator who has Native American ancestry. He was director of Lawrence County Schools’ Indian Education Program. William Hawkins is the executive director of Historic Tuscaloosa.  The Byler Road was the first major road connecting the northern and southern parts of Alabama, Hawkins said. Its connection to southern Alabama was through its terminus in Northport and Tuscaloosa, the farthest north it was possible to reach by boat at the time. The Black Warrior River at Tuscaloosa, which served as an early Alabama capital, ultimately floated cargo boats to Mobile. Byler was a soldier who served under military general and future President Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. He was chosen to lead the construction that involved hundreds of people, including Revolutionary War and War of 1812 veterans, and enslaved people. Byler lived only a few years after its completion and was buried in Mt. Hope cemetery near Haleyville. Work was completed on the 140-mile trail in the early 1820s and provided a path for farmers to move cotton, livestock, and other goods to the navigable Black Warrior. “The significance of the Byler Road was, first, moving people and commerce in the state,” Hawkins said. Union and Confederate troops both used the road during the Civil War. It skirts Marion County and ends near Northport at the Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery at Lake Tuscaloosa. The slave cemetery was rediscovered in 1998 by a descendant of then-plantation owner John Welch Prewitt, according to a 2017 article in “Clio: Your Guide to History,” by Christopher and Ben M. Leadingham. In 2012, the cemetery was entered into the Alabama Historic Cemetery Register. The Prewitt Slave Cemetery Association, which was dissolved last year, said there are 828 people buried there. “This road was instrumental in shaping the future of the state,” Hawkins said. Ultimately, rapid expansion of railroads after the Civil War made the road obsolete. Novelist and former Daily Mountain Eagle editor Skip Tucker grew up in Eldridge. The Byler Road runs through Eldridge. Tucker spoke about four years ago at Eldridge Heritage Day and promised to join others to do what he could to revive interest. Wheeler Pounds of Oakman was one of many who worked to bring Byler Road to the forefront, Tucker said. “Wheeler came up to me after my talk to say he would help me,” Tucker said. “He has. He did twice the work.” Pounds said its work “is done and it is permanent.” “I got my reward when the historical markers went up,” Pounds said in an email. “I have searched 40 years for the Byler’s salvation.” Retired chemical engineer Joel Mize grew up in Haleyville. “It was hardscrabble Alabama,” Mize said in a 2024 Al.com article about the road. “And I certainly appreciate the people who were pioneers, who settled that territory, who made a living from the territory, and who became good citizens of Alabama by making that territory into a wilderness become livable, if you will,” Mize told Al.com. Mize included some of their stories in “The Byler Road and Its People: The Story of Alabama’s First State Road,” published in 2019, the 200th anniversary of Alabama statehood, according to the Al.com article. The trail includes markers that tell local histories. About a half-mile of the original trail exists in Tuscaloosa County. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.  The Alabama Legislature in March 2014 recognized the historic Byler Road in a joint resolution and the state Tourism Department recently approved $200,000 for the commemoration of The Byler Road. Pounds and Martha Cantrelle of Hartselle pushed through the legislation. The trail commemoration represents collaborative efforts of dedicated partners and is an Alabama Department of Tourism-sponsored, Alabama Historical Commission-reviewed, and University of Alabama-conducted project, “to ensure the trail tells the rich and authentic story of Alabama’s first road,” the university said in a release. The events to highlight Alabama’s first highway also have a tourism angle. In addition to highlighting local histories, goals include attracting visitors to trail sites and the area, and supporting small towns and businesses, the University said. Recognition of the trail between Lauderdale and Tuscaloosa counties is also the result of collaborative efforts by the Alabama Historical Commission, historians, and contributors Alabama Historical Commission markers for the Byler Road, and hundreds of other historic sites in Alabama, can be found on a map at https://hpgisportal-alabama.hub.arcgis.com/.  The Pebble Community Center is in the unincorporated community of Pebble northeast of Haleyville, north of Alabama 243, off Winston County 11/3423, and just west of Winston County 93. (Dana Thomas Beyerle compiled information from sources and conducted interviews. He is a retired Florida and Alabama journalist and the former director of communications for the Business Council of Alabama.