Jackson's Military Road

The route through this part of northwest Alabama follows one of the great early American highways, Jackson's Military Road. After the Battle of New Orleans in eighteen fifteen, General Andrew Jackson wanted a faster way to move troops between Nashville and the Gulf Coast. So beginning in eighteen seventeen, United States Army soldiers cut a road more than five hundred miles long, from near Nashville down to Louisiana, shaving roughly two hundred miles off the old journey.

It cut across country through lands long used by Native peoples. The government also hoped the road would draw settlers into the Old Southwest, and it did. Stagecoaches later ran along it, and inns called stands sprang up along the way to feed and shelter travelers.

For the early settlers of north Alabama, this dirt military road was the lifeline that opened the country.