Claiborne, Alabama's Lost River Town

Where the Alabama River bends through Monroe County, a ghost town once stood that for a time seemed destined to be the great city of the lower Alabama valley. Claiborne began as Fort Claiborne in late eighteen thirteen, a military stockade established by General Ferdinand Claiborne to protect settlers during the Creek War and serve as a staging point for operations alongside allied Choctaw warriors. The town that grew around the old fort was named Monroe County seat in eighteen nineteen.

At its peak in the eighteen thirties, Claiborne held nearly five thousand people and was a genuine port on the Alabama River. Then the losses began to accumulate: yellow fever, cholera, the county seat moved to Monroeville in eighteen thirty-two, the Civil War, and finally the railroad, which bypassed Claiborne entirely, routing traffic to inland towns. Without the railroad there was no future.

By the late nineteenth century, Claiborne had faded to almost nothing. Today only a historic house and a few old cemeteries remain where that ambitious river town once stood.