Mad Town

From Bhamwiki
Revision as of 16:31, 9 May 2016 by Dystopos (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
"Tullavahajah" shown on an 1818 map

Mud Town (also called Mudd Town, Mad Town, or Old Mudtown or, in transliteration of its Muscogean name, Talooehajah, Tulawahajah,Tullavahajah, or Tulauhabsho) 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. Sources also disagree on whether the settlement was on the east or west bank of the river.

In any case, the town was founded as a northern outpost of the Upper Creek tribes, used by traders and serving as 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. According to researchers for the WPA's Writers' Program, the town marked the junction of the East-West Trail from the Carolinas to Mississippi and the Great Trade Path connecting the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

During the Creek Indian War the town was cleared out and burned on May 1, 1814 on Andrew Jackson's orders. One veteran of that war, Joseph Roy, became an early settler in Shelby County, and is said to have erected his cabin on the bank opposite Mud Town a few years after it was burned. Virginia Duffy remembered the Mudtown site as still being used by a dwindling band of Indian "vagabond traders" at the end of the decade. It appeared on an 1825 map as "Ruins of Mad T."

See also

References

Retrieved from "http://bhamwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Mad_Town&oldid=126895"