From Here to Colorado Springs - Memphis, TN to Stone Mountain, GA

The last portion of our journey was from Memphis to Stone Mountain, a suburb of Atlanta.  We left Tennessee early and drove through the state of Alabama on our way home.  Alabama is a very pretty state to drive through.

As usual, a road sign caught my attention.  It read - Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS).  My research found that in 1964, the Presidents Appalachian Regional Commission (PARC) reported to Congress that economic growth in Appalachia would not be possible until the regions isolation had been overcome.  Apparently, roads had never been built in the area because of the terrain and the high cost of building in that area.  Congress authorized the construction of the ADHS in 1965.  The ADHS is currently authorized at 3,090 miles.  As of the end of 2017, 90.5 percent of the miles were complete or under construction.

Here is a map of the Appalachia ADHS area.

We drove through Birmingham, AL which is where my husband's Italian grandparents lived after arriving in LA from Sicily around 1900.  Most of his family moved to the Atlanta area after the depression to find work.  Interestingly enough my paternal grandmother lived in the same area of Birmingham with her first husband at the time his family lived there!

My husband and I are both natives of Atlanta.  We met in high school and married after college.  He worked at the family car business where he eventually became President of the company and then purchased it from his siblings.  He sold the business in 2001 and retired to join me in a life of leisure!

Birmingham is known as the Pittsburgh of the South because of its history of iron smelting.  All of the materials necessary for iron production are available in the area.  One of the city's famous landmarks is the 55 foot cast iron statue named Vulcan that symbolized their steel industry at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904.

Picture of Vulcan statue provided by Yelp.

Here is a picture of a steel bridge in the Fountain Heights area of Birmingham as we drove under it.

As we were driving along I spotted this pickup truck full of watermelons in front of us.  We used to see this a lot in Atlanta when we were growing up but not so much now.

Here are some interesting facts about Alabama:

* The first electric trolley system was introduced in Montgomery in 1886.

* AL is the largest supplier of cast-iron and steel pipe products in the US.

* The town of Enterprise (which is a town we go through often on our way to Destin, FL!) houses the Boll Weevil Monument to acknowledge the role this destructive insect played in encouraging farmers to grow crops other than cotton.

* Hank Aaron (baseball player) was born in Mobile in 1954.

* Joe Louis (boxer) was born in Lexington in 1914.

* Willie Mays (baseball player) was born in Westfield in 1931.

* Tallulah Bankhead (singer) was born in Huntsville in 1902.

* Nat King Cole (singer) was born in Montgomery in 1919.

* At the Battle of Mobile Bay, Admiral David Farragut issued his famous command - "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." - in 1864.

* The word Alabama means tribal town in the Creek Indian language.

* Hematite is the state mineral.

* The star blue quartz is the state gemstone.

* The state flower is the Camellia.

* The state bird is the Yellowhammer (yellow-shafted flicker)

I think you can tell by this short post that we were really ready to get home after such a long drive!  I hope you have enjoyed and learned something while reading my posts - I know I learned some things!