Mad Town

Mud Town (also called Mudd Town or Old Mudtown or Talooehajah) was a name used for a settlement used by Indian traders on the banks of the Cahaba River in present day Shelby County.

Some sources indicate that it was located at the confluence of the Little Cahaba, just above the present crossing of U.S. Highway 280. Others place it further downstream, at the site where the Altadena Valley Country Club was later developed.

In any case, the town was an important landmark on the Bear Meat Cabin Road or "Great Tennessee Trail" from Ditto's Landing on the Tennessee to Old Town on the Warrior River that later became the Huntsville Pike.

During the Creek Indian War the town was cleared out and burned on May 1, 1814 by John Coffee's forces on Andrew Jackson's orders. Virginia Duffy remembered it still being used by a dwindling band of "vagabond traders" in the mid-1800s.

See also

• "Mudd's Town", reportedly an alternative suggestion for the name of Birmingham, presumably to honor Judge William Mudd
• Mudtown Eat & Drink, a restaurant in Cahaba Heights

References

• Dubose, John Witherspoon (1887) Jefferson County and Birmingham, Alabama: Historical and Biographical Birmingham: Teeple & Smith, Publishers; Caldwell Printing Works.
• Armes, Ethel (1910) The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama. Birmingham: Birmingham Chamber of Commerce
• Cruikshank, George H. (1920) History of Birmingham and Its Environs: A Narrative Account of Their Historical Progress, Their People, and Their Principal Interests 2 volumes. Chicago, Illinois: Lewis Publishing Company. - via Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections
• Barefield, Marilyn Davis (1989) A History of Mountain Brook, Alabama and Incidentally of Shades Valley Birmingham: Southern University Press ISBN 0876519907