Alabama River Trail: Central Mills

"13 mi. Central Mills, population 15. Coordinates, 32.1710 north latitude and 87.2627 west longitude.

This community is located in extreme western Dallas County near the Marengo county line. It has a discontinued United States Post Office and is situated on the Louisville and Nashville railroad.A mill was probably once located in this west-central railroad stop.The post office was established in in 1878. Cotton, corn, and hay are grown in the surrounding area, and cattle are raised.

In Central Mills, the Alabama River Trail turns eastward onto Alabama State Highway 66. About a mile weast of the village, it crosses the Louisville and Nashville railroad tracks. Undulating farm country borders each side of the trail. In about 2 miles, Alabama State Highway 66 endsat the junction with Alabama  State Highway 5. So the trail here turns southward following the latter highway."

Chiriaco, Amerigo C ., Vol A, Alabama River Trail. The Wiregrass Archives, Dothan, AL.



Cluster of Towers in an Abandoned Field

Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, Dallas County, AL

After leaving the landfill, we continue south on County Road 1. At 7:52 a.m. The majority of what we see is pastureland and an occasional abandoned silo. Near Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, there is an unusual cluster of three towers. Some of the land that we pass has been planted with rows of slash pine. It's early on a Sunday morning and we see deer hunters parked occasionally on the side of the rode. On this stretch of road, we pass very few homes. We finally pass one cultivated field and an abandoned brick church on the left. There is an area on the right where trees have recently been harvested.

At 8:01 a.m. we cross the Dallas County line. There is a change in the highway immediately. The road is in poor condition. There are few residences scattered here and there. Mostly older mobile homes, many in disrepair.The is scrubby forest on both sides of the road. We reach the tiny town of Central Mills at approximately 8:05 a.m. It consists of a few homes and a church. We cross a railroad track at 8:12 and the topography begins to change and become more hilly. There are cattle pastures on both sides of the road.

We reach the intersection of Highway 5 at 8:34 a.m.

Alabama River Trail: Uniontown, Perry County 1

"1.5 mi. On the westside of Cahaba Road (Perry County 1) is the Uniontown Municipal Airport, which lies at an elevation of 210 feet above sea level. The airport has an asphalt runway, 3000 feet in length, and runway lights used in hours of darkness.

After proceeding generally in a southeastward direction from Uniontown, the Alabama River Trail (cy. 1) junctions with another Perry County Road, 21, which continues southeastward. However, at this point the trail veers in a more southerly direction, moving almost straightward across rolling farmlands and luxuriant pastures, occasionally broken by groups of pink flowers known locally as buttercups. The junction is 5 miles from downtown Uniontown."


Chiriaco, Amerigo C ., Vol A, Alabama River Trail. The Wiregrass Archives, Dothan, AL.


At 7:18 a.m. we turn onto Perry County Rd 1. We drive for another 17 minutes until we get to the site of the long-abandoned Uniontown airport. The runway is cracked and in disrepair and weeds have grown up and covered the edges of the crumbling asphalt. The rest of the property consist of bare red clay patches and tall, dead weeds. A strip of modest homes borders the airport on the right side. There is one empty hangar to the left.

Empty Hangar, Uniontown, AL

Uniontown Municipal Airport Runway

I snap a few pictures, and we continue on. At 7:44 a.m. we see a huge hill in front of us. It's covered in bright green grass and looks strange and out of place with the rest of the landscape. As we approach the entrance of the property on our left, we see a "Landfill" sign. There are a few bare trees on the opposite side of the road where a dozen or more vultures are perched. We pulled the car over and climbed out. We heard coyotes howling.

Later, I learn that this is the Arrowhead Landfill and is the subject of controversy over civil rights violations. Here is a Huffington Post article on Arrowhead Landfill.

Arrowhead Landfill

Turkey Vultures at the Landfill

Alabama River Trail: Uniontown

Alabama Catfish Feed Mill, Uniontown, AL

Fields with grazing cattle and grass farming are mainly what we see as we drive towards Uniontown. Perry County Correctional Center is on the right side of the highway. We arrived on the outskirts of Uniontown at 7:15 a.m.The Alabama Catfish Feed Mill was the first manufacturing business that we passed. We also drove by a Harvest Select catfish food processing plant and a Piggly Wiggly on our way into town. The slacks manufacturer and fertilizer plants that Chiriaco mentions may be closed now. We could not locate them as we drove through.

Chiriaco's description of Uniontown is the following:

"0 mi. Uniontown. Population 1, 730. Coordinates, 32.2658 north latitude and 87.3051 west longitude. This town is located in extreme southeastern Perry County next to the Marengo County line. It is an incorporated town with a United States Post Office. It was settled in 1818 by the Wood Brothers, who were honored with the town's  original name, Woodville. Because there was already a Woodville Post Office in the state when the post office was established here in 1833, Philick J. Weaver suggested the name be changed to Uniontown for his father's post office in Maryland. Uniontown was reincorporated in 1836.

Uniontown's population in 1960 was 1,993. In west central Alabama, west of Selma, it is in the fertile black belt. The town manufactures knit slacks, fertilizers, and cheese, and does sheet metal work.

Perry County has an area of 734 square miles and a population of 12,759. In west central Alabama, its county seat is Marion, most of the county is in the black belt; it is drained by the Cahaba River and Oakmulgee Creek. Cotton is grown in the county and livestock is raised. Part of Talladega National Forest is in the Northeast portion. The county was formed in 1819.

The Alabama River Trail leaves Uniontown via Cahaba Road. Alongside the road, within the town limits, is Farmer's Fertilizers, Inc., which manufactures fertilizers. The company was established in 1982.

Outside the town limits, the trail, while in Perry County, courses through Uniontown County Subdivision, which occupies the entire panhandle of the county and part of its southwestern district. The Uniontown division had a population of 5,621 in 1960 and 4,892 1970, a decline of 13 percent.

The black belt, which the trail now traverses, led the way in new cattle development when backward and ruinous methods of farming, combined with boll-weevil damage, forced abandonment of much cotton acreage. Cattle had not been imported before, because of the cattle tick, which caused tick fever (no longer present); because of poor feeding practices, in large part resulting from the fact that northern hay crops were not well suited either to the climate, or to the system of farming in vogue; and because of lack of care in breeding."

Chiriaco, Amerigo C .,  Vol A, Alabama River Trail. The Wiregrass Archives, Dothan, AL.

Alabama River Trail

Edmund Pettus Bridge,  Selma, AL, where HWY 80 crosses the Alabama River.

After sifting through all of the notebooks in the Chiriaco collection, I narrowed down the material to three  travel journal selections of Alabama highways that would be fairly easy for me to replicate. I recruited my father, who is the best partner in all things adventure, to help me with my first attempt at following Chiriaco's route through Alabama. The journal selection was entitled "Alabama River Trail" and is found in the notebook labeled  "Vol. A."  Chiriaco's subscript of this section is the following: "Perry County 1, Wilcox County 1, Monroe County 1, Escambia County 1." Dad and I attended an event at the Alabama Department of History and Archives in Montgomery on January 14, 2012, and decided to leave from there. We drove to Selma and stayed the night. It would be a perfect place to start from the next morning.

We got an early start the next morning on January 15, 2012 at 6:45 a.m. and left Selma headed towards Uniontown on HWY 80 west. It was a frosty morning and very clear, approximately 27°F.

HWY 80 west leaving Selma, AL

Chiriaco's first entry in this section:

" Part 1. Uniontown Alabama, to Atmore, Alabama, 139 miles. This part constitutes the entire journey of the Alabama River Trail. The route, except for a small portion at the beginning, travels through the Lower Coastal Plains, formed by marine deposits. These deposits weathered to form the soils that are now present of the soils are gray to red sandy loams or loamy sand. The relief of the agricultural portion of this area of the plains ranges from to as much as 10 percent. In the main, the the area is nearly level to gently rolling, with elevations ranging from sea level to 500 feet above. Elevations of from 250 to 400 feet above sea level are most common. Production of peanuts, corn, cotton, and [hogs?] constitute the major farming enterprises. Production of timber products and extensive grazing are also important.

Section 1. Uniontown, Perry County, to Catherine, Wilcox County, 23 miles. For most of this section, The Alabama River Trail twists across the rolling farmlands and pastures of the Black Belt. Nearing Catherine, it gradually ascends the Ripley Cuesta; the [...], it drops into another rolling lowland. The land is extensively cultivated, but there are also large areas of pasture. Gum trees are common, and thrive in frequent clumps. Generally, however, oak and pine trees cover land that is not farmed. The soils are mostly gray to brown in color; some are black. The clay soils are underlain with Selma chalk, a high-lime, white clay.

 The Choctaw Indians controlled this area of Alabama before the arrival of the European. They are one of the most important Muskhogean tribes, comprising the [Ahefatokla], Oklafalsya, and Sixtowns. The Indians sided with the confederates in the civil war, and suffered the rights of all  their rights. They were one of the five civilized tribe. The Choctaws practiced head deformation of infants, and are thereby known as 'flatheads.'"
 Chiriaco, Amerigo C., Vol A, "Alabama River Trail." The Wiregrass Archives., Dothan, AL.

Who is Amerigo C. Chiriaco?

I spent some time in the Wiregrass Archives in 2010 during my last semester at Troy University. I volunteered on  an archiving project that consisted of sorting through unknown material that had been donated around 2004 to the university library in Dothan, AL. The boxes of material had been stored on a shelf in the archives, mostly untouched, since their arrival.

The first task assigned to me by Dr. Marty Olliff, Director of the archives and history professor, was to take a macro approach and start by identifying the contents of the boxes. That was easy. Notebooks. Lots of spiral-bound notebooks, like the cheap kind you can buy at the grocery store. There were 83 notebooks of various sizes, a postcard, 127 highway maps, and a four large binders.

Next, I had to very briefly scan through the notebooks and attempt to generalize the essence of the subject matter. This is where it got interesting. Opening the first notebook, I saw rows of tiny meticulous handwriting in pencil. I flipped through the notebook and saw page after page of plant taxonomy lists in Latin, organized by alphabetical order, all in the same meticulous handwriting. I opened another notebook and saw the same handwriting in pencil, but this one looked a little different. This notebook was a travel journal of a trip through Northern Europe. Each entry contained a description of the traveller's location according to highway mile makers, brief notations on the history and politics of the location, mentions of local flora and fauna, and economical information on natural resources and exports. Local restaurants and their specialties were sometimes named, and other information of interest to tourists. There were also personal narratives scattered throughout the journals about experiences like encountering seals off the coast of Marmot Island, and searching for Bronze Age burial mounds in Denmark. There were journals of travelling through North America, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Russia.

I browsed through each notebook and perceived they were all similar. Seventeen notebooks contained lists of plants and animals,  forty were travel journals, and thirteen had information on economic production organized by country. Nine of the notebooks were constructed to be directories of businesses, schools, and churches, and one notebook was an organization of indigenous peoples.

The maps in the collection are road maps of the United States. Out of the 127 maps, most are of Alabama.

I opened one of the three-ringed binders with no expectations of what they might contain. On the inside of the front cover was a key and code explanation. The code was the series of numbers that followed some of the journal entries. The key to the code linked the numbers to maps in the collection and noted where the items in the collection were located in the writer's house, under the bed in a suitcase or the hall bookshelf. The binders were also organized to be references to other publications, with annotations by the author on various subjects and countries.

The post card in the collection was from Chiriaco Summit, CA , a landmark where there is a store and museum. I contacted Chiriaco Summit, and there is no known relation that the family in California was aware of.

Who was the author of these notebooks? Why would someone take the time to compose all of this?
Unfortunately, the only information that the archives had on the donor was a name and address given when the collection was donated to the library. The collection had also contained several coffee table travel books that were not kept by the library. I was able to determine that the items had previously to Mr. Amerigo C. Chiriaco, and that the donor was believed to be Mr. Chiriaco's son. The address and phone number given to the library are obsolete and I have not been able to contact him.

 I was able to find very little on the internet regarding Mr. Chiriaco. The only thing I did find was publication information on a book by an author with the same name,  on the textile exporting industry. This might be a clue to who Mr. Chiriaco is, and maybe why he travelled so extensively. There is no date given in the journal entries. Census date from 1980-1990 is given for various municipalities in the travel journals for North America.

What would be the best way to learn more about Mr. Chiriaco and his purpose for creating this massive collection of information? By following the routes in his roadtrips, starting at home in Alabama.