Blountsville, Once Bear Meat Cabin

This old town started life with one of the more memorable names in Alabama. Settlers Caleb Fryley and Johnny Jones founded it in eighteen sixteen as Bear Meat Cabin, after a Creek and Cherokee village that stood here, named for a Native translator who lived in the area. As pioneers streamed west at the end of the Creek War, it became a busy stopping place.

The county around it was created in eighteen eighteen and named for Willie Blount, the Tennessee governor who had aided settlers during that war. The town took the name Blountsville, opened its post office in eighteen twenty-five, and was incorporated in eighteen twenty-seven. It served as the seat of Blount County until eighteen eighty-nine, when the county government moved to the new town of Oneonta. Blountsville has kept its early frontier character ever since.