Recently, I have been up to Crossville, AL a couple times. I have been travelling for work. The first time Gordon was off work so he drove me. This last time he wasn't able to so it was myself and Gay on our own. It was an adventure. On the way up we said we wanted to do 2 things while we were there. 1. Bring home a rock. 2. Stop and take pictures of an old Civil War gravesite that the road to the bank cuts through. (The bank acquired 2 new banks. One in Crossville and one in Gulf Shores. I have been helping with the transition with the Crossville branch.) We were able to do both and then some!
This is a link to Crossville, AL town page.
http://www.crossvillealabama.com/ . I started there when I was researching the history of the area. I should have known though, the best place to find out what we wanted was to ask the people of the town. I met one of our new customers who's family has been in the area for 10 generations. He filled us in on the graves that the road cut though and where the old road was.
These first few pics are of a ranch just off of I59 when you turn to go towards Crossville. We had to go up this mountain everyday. It really is some pretty country. While we were there this trip though the sun never came out and it snowed the night before we left.
This is what it looked like all week!
Gay wanted a picture of the barbed wire. I think it turned out good.
These are the headstones that caught our attention every morning. As you are going up the mountain on Hwy 68 towards Crossville they are on your right. On our last morning there we pulled over (and way up the road I might add) and made our way down to the site. Gay didn't make it all the way down there. She was picking out our rocks to bring home. You can see there is a path. It lead down to a stream. I didn't go that far.... Remember... I'm on my way to work. Just past these on the opposite side of the road is where you can see the old mule road path. Our customer that I had a long talk with told me that right there is where back in the day, when KKK was real big in the area, there was a sign there that said something to the fact that if you were black you better have your rear off the top of the mountain before dark or you were not coming off the mountain alive. He told me how his family had farms in the area and they had 3 buses that would go to the bottom of the mountain, pick up their workers and they would have to be sure to have them back to the bottom before dark. He also said that his family would have to walk the parameters of the fields with shot guns to ward off anyone that wanted to mess with them. The times have really changed!
Crossville is on top of Sand Mountain. From what they said there are parts of it that is nothing but sand but I never seen it. Never went to look for it either. They said that Sand Mountain can also be called Meth Mountain nowadays. So I just took their word for it. One of the girls that works in the branch said that A&E did an Intervention episode located there. Here is the link
Our hotel was in Ft. Payne. So one morning we left early and went into downtown. There was an antique shop Gay wanted to check out. It ended up not being open but I was able to get some really good pictures of it and other things in the area.
The antique shop used to be some type of factory.
The theatre
This courtyard was next to the theatre.
We came up on this old truck to. I would love to have it at home for a picture prop!
So we ended up in a cemetary. Our customer told me that this one had graves dated back to the early 1800's. He was right.
It looked a little spooky because the fog never lifted.
These crosses only had names written on them. No dates or any information.
There were a lot of headstones that looked like this one. It is just a piece of stone from the side of the mountain that they carved the info into. This one was dated 1896.
This was at the back of the cemetary.
The last night we were there we got snow. It was so pretty. I went to pick us up a pizza and it just started coming down. I posted a couple pictures on Facebook of my car in the snow. I would have loved Kennedy to be able to see it. Taylor has seen snow and loves it.
Gay getting a couple pictures.
Marli was excited I was home. She made herself comfortable in my suitcase while I was trying to unpack! She has been the best little pound puppy.
Overall we had a good trip up there. We just tried to make the most of our time away from home. That's something I will not be making a habit of!
