A magnet for civilization, exploration, conflict
The panorama from Neely Henry Dam features rolling, wooded hills. Scattered docks dot the shoreline – disturbed only by the occasional washing wake of a fishing boat – with paths leading up to houses hidden among the sprawling trees.
Most days, the lake is calm, serene – a quiet place to relax and watch the cool water arrive from the north, from Weiss Lake, and meander slowly on its journey south, joining the Alabama River, washing through Mobile Bay and spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.
From this unassuming view, people in a car driving across Neely Henry Dam on St. Clair County Road 26 can also see one of the most storied pieces of land in the state – Ten Island Park.
Today, the park provides a place for lake lovers and fishermen to relax, launch boats, picnic and enjoy the calm beauty of one of state’s less trafficked lakes. But before construction began on Neely Henry Dam, backing up the waters of the Coosa River, Ten Island’s natural river ford was a magnet for civilization, exploration and conflict.
Evidence of settlement at the site dates back to Paleo, Archaic, Woodland and Mississippian Indian groups, and there is historical speculation that Hernando de Soto used the site to cross the wild-flowing Coosa River in the early 1540s.
It was the Creek Indians who first named the site Oti Palin – or Ten Island – after a series of islands along several miles of the Coosa River. The Creek settled on Wood Island – the southernmost and largest in the chain – which was later incorporated into the construction of Neely Henry Dam.
During the Creek War, Andrew Jackson and his men, including Davy Crockett and Sam Houston, built a wagon road along an Indian trail leading to Ten Island. In 1813, they constructed Fort Strother nearby and used the site as a staging ground for battles in Tallushatchee, Talladega and Horseshoe Bend. Later, the site was used as survey point boundary between the Cherokee and Creek nations.
Ten Island’s strategic position was again put to use during the Civil War, when U.S. Gen. Lovell Rousseau’s troops crossed the ford to attack the newly built Janney Furnace in Ohatchee.
By the late 1890s, the site’s strategic battle position was overshadowed by its strategic importance in taming the Coosa River. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built Locks 1, 2 and 3 to allow steamboat travel along the river, and in 1962 Alabama Power began work on Neely Henry Dam.
The backed-up water created Lake Neely Henry and covered all of the islands that formed Ten Island with the exception of the top of Rock Island – the second in the chain. Today, hundreds of people a year visit the crest of this island not knowing its storied past.
