The Toll Gate on Byler Road

Near here once stood a toll gate on one of Alabama's most important early roads. In December of eighteen nineteen, the very month Alabama became a state, the legislature authorized Captain John Byler to build a toll road connecting the Tennessee River country with Tuscaloosa on the Black Warrior River. Byler Road, as it became known, was built in the mid eighteen twenties and is considered the oldest public road in Alabama still in use today.

Its real job was cotton. Planters in the Tennessee Valley needed to get their bales south to the Black Warrior, then downriver to Mobile and on to Europe. In return for building and maintaining the road, Byler and his family were allowed to collect tolls for twelve years.

As many as twenty-five stands, offering lodging and meals, lined the route. Both armies marched this road during the Civil War.