HISTORY
NATIVE AMERICAN
Hernando DeSoto and his entourage were the first Europeans to
enter the Coosa Valley in 1540. The tribes they encountered during their
travels were more like large organized kingdoms than small villages. DeSoto
utilized the food, resources, and women of the Natives to sustain his party
as they traveled across the state. Displeased with this marauder, the Indian
Chief Tascalooza staged an attack on DeSoto at a location in south Alabama
(its exact location is unknown). The ensuing fight was the bloodiest
encounter with Indians in the Western Hemisphere (Rivers of Alabama).
The toll on the Indians was much worse than for the Spaniards, but DeSoto
left the state wounded, and much more cautious of his dealings with the
tribes.
After the Spaniards left the region, a century of disease
(carried by the Spaniards) decimated the tribes. By the time Europeans
returned, more than a century later, there was no sign of the once vast
kingdoms described by DeSoto. The tribes had fragmented and reconstituted in
smaller bands of villages across the state.
Early
in the 17th Century the British established a practical monopoly
of trade with the Indians. The French were desperate to compete with these
savy English traders for control of the region. The French believed that the
forks of the Coosa
and Tallapoosa where they formed
the Alabama River was the “key to the country.” At that time commerce
depended upon control of waterways for the transport of goods. This critical
juncture of the Coosa and
Tallapoosa was the gateway to the port
of Mobile Bay, which in turn connected the region to the European homeland.
Further encouraging the French, the Alabama Indians (part of the newly
formed lower Creeks) travelled to Mobile and invited the French to build a
fort in their territory. In 1717 the French arrived to build Fort
Toulouse
overlooking the Coosa and Tallapoosa.
This marked the first significant European presence in the region.
In
the late seventeenth century virtually all of the English traders and
settlers fled the area as a result of Indian uprisings inspired by the
Yamasee Indians in the Carolinas.
The
French and British struggled for the area until 1763 when the Treaty of
Paris was signed and the French surrendered the area.
As
encroachment upon their lands increased, the remaining tribes formed a
confederacy called the Upper Creeks. This band was brutally defeated by
General Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend. The following Treaty of Fort
Jackson in 1814 gave Creeks the land between the Coosa and Tallapoosa
Rivers,
but almost immediately white settlers began moving into the area at the
forks that, unfortunate for the Creeks, was not included in the nation.
The
very first river town to form in the Coosa
Basin
began in the 1830’s right at the base of the last falls on the Coosa,
the Devil’s Staircase. The first post office was named “Falls of the Coosa” until a year later when the name
Wetumpka was adopted, a Native American word for “the falling stream.” The
fishing in these early years was purported to be excellent (Jackson
104)
Steamboat’s on the Coosa
The
first steamboat on the Coosa
River
was appropriately named the Coosa.
It was launched on the fourth of July in 1845. The steamer was built in
Cincinnati, traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans,
then through inland passages of the Gulf of Mexico to Mobile and up the
Alabama to the Coosa.
When the steamer arrived at Wetumpka, which was the head of navigation
heading upstream, it stopped unable to navigate up the treacherous Devil’s
Staircase. The boat was disassembled and carried by oxen drawn wagons to
Greensport where she was reassembled and launched.
The
steamer immediately received a contract to carry mail from Greensport to
Rome. After this historic launch the ambitious city of Wetumpka was of
lesser importance as a river trade center. Today, the town of Greensport is
buried under the waters of Neely Henry Lake. (dnordem &
Jackson)
Gadsden was originally called Double Springs. It began as a lumber mill town
as steamer’s used the Coosa
to tow rafts of logs to be milled. At the end of the Civil War the town of
Gadsden
claimed only 400 inhabitants.
The
city of Attalla in Etowah
County,
west of
Gadsden, borrowed its name from the Cherokee word Otali or
“mountain.”
ANTEBELLUM
Impassable Shoals of
the Coosa
Shortly after the close of the Civil War, with miles of southern rail lines
destroyed by Union troops, the rivers of
Alabama
once again became a vital artery of commerce throughout the region.
From Rome to Greensport on the Upper Coosa, the river was virtually clear
for navigation with few hidden rocks submerged below the surface. It
began to dawn on residents that ferrying the goods of Alabama upstream to be
bought and sold in Rome, Georgia
had little advantages to the long-term economic growth of the state.
However, with long impassable shoals separating Greensport and Riverside
on the upper Coosa from Wetumpka on the lower Coosa, there was no downstream
market alternative. The Lower Coosa,
for all intents and purposes, ran smack into a rocky dead end. (Jackson)
In 1867, Alabama legislators set out to resolve this dilemma by authorizing
a survey of the Alabama-Coosa corridor with the intention of making the
waterway navigable for steamboat traffic. The budget for this survey was set
at $3,000. (Jackson)
The first 200+ miles of this survey found no obstacles too difficult to
overcome, but in the last 60 miles the river dropped over 275 feet (over
whitewater) before reaching Wetumpka. The survey’s leader, Major Thomas
Pearsall, all of his earlier optimism dashed, reported that no fewer than 18
locks and dams, each 10 feet high, 210 feet long, and 25 feet wide would be
required to navigate this section. The last falls, known as Devil’s
Staircase, would require an additional 7 locks and dams, unless of course,
it was feasible to build a canal around this mammoth obstruction. (Jackson)
Though his estimated price tag of $2,500,000 was astronomical for the times,
Pearsall believed it would be well worth it for the ability to send commerce
south to Mobile, for the benefit of Alabama, rather than north to Rome for
the benefit of Georgia. (Jackson)
Pearsall’s recommendations were ignored, and the dream of a navigable Coosa
River
was not realized.
“As
far as commerce was concerned, the Coosa and the Alabama were two rivers
that flowed in different directions.” (Jackson)
As
the future of steamboat commerce declined, the use of steamboats for
pleasure and amusement soared. Historians often refer to this period as the
Golden Age of Alabama, and to the recreational steamboats as “Floating
Palaces.” This era ended with the proliferation of railroads, a decade after
the Civil War and life along the rivers has never returned to its former
splendor.
INDUSTRIAL
The origins of Popeye
the Sailor
Back
in 1913 the lock and dam at Mayo’s Bar in Georgia had been completed by the
Corps making navigation over the Horseleg Shoals of the
Coosa
easier. The dam raised water levels about 10 feet.
The
Corps was charged to keep the channel clear and they used the boat “Annie M”
later renamed “Leota.” The Captain was named Sims and was a resident of
Ohatchee,
Alabama. His
son, Tom Sims became a comic strip artist when he inherited the strip
“Thimble Theatre” from its creator Elzie Segar who died in 1938.
“The
strips story line dealt with the Oyl family that owned a shipping business.
Commodore Oyl had a son, Castor, and a daughter, Olive. One of the sailors
that worked for the Commodore was a “wise cracking, spinach eating chap”
named Popeye. Tom Sims took that character, spun him off and gave him his
own strip thus creating “Popeye the Sailorman.”
Tom
Sims is quoted saying “Fantastic as Popeye is, the whole story is based on
facts. As a boy I was raised on the Coosa
River.
When I began writing the script for Popeye I put my characters back on the
old “Leota” that I knew as a boy, transformed it into a ship and made the Coosa River
a salty sea.” (dnordem)
