Atmore: Williams Station and the Poarch Creek Homeland

Atmore began as a supply stop called Williams Station along a spur of the Mobile and Great Northern Railroad. A sawmill sparked enough growth to turn the station into a town, and Atmore was incorporated in nineteen oh seven. But the deeper story here predates the railroad by centuries.

The Poarch Band of Creek Indians, descendants of the original Creek Nation that once covered most of Alabama and Georgia, were never forcibly removed from this corner of Escambia County. They stayed through the removal era while most of their nation was forced west. In nineteen eighty-four the federal government formally recognized the Poarch Creek as a tribe, and about two hundred twenty-nine acres were placed in trust as a reservation near Atmore, making them the only federally recognized tribe in Alabama.