The Tensaw River: Alabama's Hidden Heritage Corridor

Summary

The Tensaw River introduces one of the American South's richest and most fertile natural features. Author Mike Bunn is director of Historic Blakeley State Park, which is nestled in a prominent bend of the majestic Tensaw River.

Forming the eastern boundary of the expansive Mobile-Tensaw Delta, the Tensaw has had little industrial development. Left largely undisturbed, the river flows free and bountiful into the grand estuary of Mobile Bay in ways that would be recognizable to Native Americans centuries ago and to pioneers who arrived before Alabama became a state.

Bunn's unforgettable stories in The Tensaw River trace the construction and occupation of the Bottle Creek site, an important mound complex built by Southeastern Native Americans a millennia ago. Nearby Blakeley is an antebellum ghost town whose lost memories tease the imagination. During the Civil War, the boom of artillery fire in the battle that sealed the fate of the city of Mobile echoed along the bends in the Tensaw.

Located near popular travel destinations, the Tensaw's "Forgotten Cultural Heritage Corridor" is a gateway to the enchanting beauty of—and humankind's relationship to—the landscape of the American South.