On this day in Alabama history: Stouts Road was commissioned

December 23, 1822

On Dec. 23, 1822, the Alabama Legislature commissioned Abraham Stouts to build a public road from Morgan County to the Black Warrior River. After construction was complete, Stouts was required to report his success to the Morgan County Court, which appointed three commissioners to inspect the work at Stouts’ expense. Stouts was then granted permission to build a turnpike gate and collect tolls for 12 years. As the area’s mineral resources developed, Stouts Road became the “Main Street” for the new mining communities of Morris, Kimberly and Warrior, and the farming communities of Gardendale and Fultondale. A district of saloons and whiskey houses, which became known as “Bloody Beat 22,” served miners from Lewisburg, Glendale and Fulton Springs. The area later became Fultondale’s business district. A few sections of the historic road are still called Stouts Road.

Read more at Bhamwiki.

Old Morgan County Courthouse, Bluff City Road, Somerville, 1978. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

A train hauls coal from the Warrior Coal Field outside Birmingham. The large coal reserves in the district sparked railroad construction and industrial development throughout northern Alabama. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, photograph by O.V. Hunt, courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives)

Coal mine at Lewisburg, 1937. (Photograph by Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Gardendale homesteads, 1937. (Photograph by Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.