Steeped in History

Focused on the future

STORY BY MICHAEL BIRD PHOTOS BY AUDRA SPEARS & CARMEN RODGERS

Imagine smalltown America, a place where windows can be left open and everybody knows everyone else. Imagine somewhere to raise a family that has a strong school district and children are taught to excel. Imagine a town where some of the most consequential employers in North America are based and where good jobs and wages are available for anyone willing to work.

All of that can be found in Tallassee, or as known to locals, the treasure on the Tallapoosa.

The native Muskogee-Creek peoples that settled what was known as Talisi built their first settlement near the Great Falls of the Tallapoosa River, where Thurlow Dam is today.

Tallassee was settled in 1835, but its origins can be traced back much further.

Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto and 600 soldiers on horses marched into Talisi in the fall of 1540 and celebrated one of the first Catholic masses in the New World. DeSoto and his soldiers stayed for more than two

People gather at the Tallassee Mill in1943

The mill bridge connects mill one and mill two but is no longer open to the public

weeks in this Creek settlement.

Tecumseh famously visited Tukabatchee, a nearby town, in 1811. His visit to the capital of the Creek Nation sparked the Creek Indian War of 1813 and inevitably led to a U.S. victory over the Creek. Tukabatchee was the last great nation of the Creek Indians.

Years later, in 1832, Tallapoosa County was formed. The outlying county markers included Tallassee; however, with the creation of Elmore County in 1866, west Tallassee branched off and became part of Elmore County, making the Tallapoosa River the divider between the two counties. East Tallassee stayed in Tallapoosa County, a distinction that remains today.

Barent DuBois, the founding father of Tallassee, married a half-Creek named Milly Reed. DuBois and Milly sold their 2,100 acres of land and water power to investors Thomas Barnett and William Marks in 1844. They built the second textile mill in Alabama: TallasseeMount Vernon Mills, which would remain in continuous operation until 2006.

During the Civil War, the mill was used as an armory for the Confederacy and manufactured carbines. When Union troops, under the direction of General William Tecumseh Sherman, were burning everything possible in the South near the end of the war, they had planned to destroy the armory; however, Sherman’s soldiers got lost on the way to Tallassee and, therefore, the mill complex survived.

Many mid-century Tallassee buildings have been preserved. The East Tallassee Elementary School is now City Hall. The community library was recently renovated. The community hospital remains, but in name only as the original was torn down, and a more modern replacement stands in its place. The Fitzpatrick Bridge, built in 1940, has received many upgrades and is kept up-to-date on building codes. Thurlow Dam, built in 1931 by Alabama Power Company, still operates today; and the J.E. “Hot” O’Brien Stadium is named in honor of the coach who presided over the greatest winning

streak in Alabama high school football history.

Much has been said and written about Tallassee’s appreciation of the past.

So what of its future?

This summer, the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs Director, Kenneth Boswell, toured Tallassee with Mayor Johnny Hammock for the second time. He pledged a $250,000 Community Block Grant to develop infrastructure around the town.

Hammock has pursued several other grants over the past five years. For example, the U.S. Department of Commerce awarded a $2.4 million grant to the City of Tallassee in 2019 to make critical upgrades and improvements to gas and water lines and funds to tear down dilapidated structures in the city. The first elementary school In 2020, the Federal has been preserved Highway Administration and turned into the city hall awarded Tallassee with a Transportation Alternatives Program grant. This grant will make new sidewalks and freshly paved roads possible in downtown Tallassee. Along with new lighting, the City plans to put down new fiber optic cable for high-speed internet.

Another outward sign of Tallassee’s growth is the brand-new Tallassee High School, to be completed in fall 2022. Tallassee High is a 5A school and proudly boasts academic, artistic and athletic successes in the classroom, on the stage and on the field. THS had been housed in a structure built in 1929 to replace the original school that burned near the same site on Barnett Boulevard.

The 2022 structure will be state-of-the-art and will have one of the finest performing arts facilities in the River Region when it is completed.

Tallassee is a town on the move, with admiration for its past but focused on its future.

The community library, built in 1921, and has been preserved and renovated