List_of_National_Historic_Landmarks_in_Alabama

List of National Historic Landmarks in Alabama

This is a complete List of National Historic Landmarks in Alabama, of which there are 36. The United States National Historic Landmark program is operated under the auspices of the National Park Service, and recognizes structures, districts, objects, and similar resources according to a list of criteria of national significance. The state of Alabama is home to 36 of these landmarks, tracing a broad sweep of history from the precolonial era, through the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Space Age, as well as many points in between.

In addition, there are four similar sites that are not currently National Historic Landmarks. One site in Alabama was designated a National Historic Landmark, but was subsequently de-designated. Three other areas are listed in the National Park system and are more highly protected than other historic sites. These are not also named National Historic Landmarks.

National Historic Landmarks in Alabama

The table below lists all of these sites, along with added detail and description.

	Landmark name	Locality	County	Description
	Alabama, USS (battleship)	Mobile	Mobile	One of only two surviving South Dakota-class battleships, Alabama was commissioned in 1942 and spent 40 months in active service in the World War II's Pacific theatre, earning 9 battle stars over 26 engagements with the Japanese.
2	Apalachicola Fort Site	Holy Trinity	Russell	Spain established this wattle and daub blockhouse on the Chattahoochee River in 1690, in an attempt to maintain influence among the Lower Creek Indians. It was used for only one year, and destroyed by the Spanish when they abandoned it.
3	Barton Hall	Cherokee	Colbert	An unusually sophisticated Greek Revival style plantation house, built in 1840. The interior contains a stairway that climbs in a series of double flights and bridge-like landings to the rooftop observatory.
4	Bethel Baptist Church, Parsonage, and Guard House	Birmingham<	Jefferson	This church served as headquarters from 1956 to 1961 for the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, an organization active in the Civil Rights Movement. Instead of focusing on bus segregation, it focused on legal and nonviolent direct action against segregated accommodations, transportation, schools and employment discrimination.
5	Bottle Creek Site	Stockton	Baldwin	An archaeological site containing 18 mounds from the Mississippian cultural period. Located on Mound Island within the Mobile-Tensaw river delta, the site was occupied between AD 1250 and 1550. Scholars believe that it functioned as a social, political, religious, and trade center for the Mobile Delta region and the central Gulf Coast.
6	Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church	Selma	Dallas	This church was a starting point for the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 and played a major role in the events that led to the adoption of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The nation's reaction to Selma's "Bloody Sunday March" is widely credited with making the passage of the Voting Rights Act politically viable in the United States Congress.
7	City Hall and Southern Market	Mobile	Mobile	The combined Old City Hall and Southern Market in Mobile was completed in 1857 and features a unique Italianate style. This building is an example of the trend in 19th-century America toward structures combining more than one civic function.
8	Henry D. Clayton House	Clayton	Barbour	Home of anti-trust legislator Henry De Lamar Clayton, Jr. He was the author of the Clayton Antitrust Act, an act that prohibited particular types of conduct that were deemed to not be in the best interest of a competitive market. He was appointed as a Federal District Judge in 1914, where he became recognized as an advocate for judicial reform.
9	J.L.M. Curry Home	Talladega	Talladega	Home of educator Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry from 1850 to 1865. He did much to encourage the expansion and improvement of the public school system and the establishment of training schools for teachers throughout the South.
10	Dexter Avenue Baptist Church	Montgomery	Montgomery	Martin Luther King, Jr. was the pastor of this church from 1954 to 1960. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was organized from here in 1955.
11	Drum, USS (submarine)	Mobile	Mobile	This was the first of the Gato class submarines to be completed before World War II and was launched on 12 May 1941. It represents the standard design for American fleet submarines at the beginning of that war. The USS Drum sank 15 Japanese ships and earned 12 battle stars.
12	Episcopal Church of the Nativity	Huntsville	Madison	This Gothic Revival church was built in 1859. It is one of the most pristine examples of Ecclesiological Gothic architecture in the South. It is also one of the least-altered structures designed by architect Frank Wills.
13	First Confederate Capitol	Montgomery	Montgomery	Delegates from six Southern states which had seceded from the Union met here on 4 February 1861 and on the 8th they adopted a "Constitution for the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America." Jefferson Davis was inaugurated on the west portico on 18 February 1861. The Congress of the Confederate States met here until 22 May 1861, when the capital was moved to Richmond, Virginia.
14	Fort Mitchell Site	Fort Mitchell	Russell	Represents the remains of three different attempts to deal with Native Americans in the United States. The first Fort Mitchell represents the military aspect of Manifest Destiny, by which the Creek Indian Nation was militarily defeated and forced to make concessions of land to the United States, the second represents the Indian Factory, and the last represents the Federal government's attempt to live up to its treaty obligations.
15	Fort Morgan	Gasque	Baldwin	A fort built in 1850, used by Confederates in Battle of Mobile Bay. Its significance lies in Admiral David Farragut's 1864 naval battle that opened Mobile Bay to the Union Navy and sealed off the port of Mobile to Confederate shipping.
16	Fort Toulouse Site	Wetumpka	Elmore	Served as the easternmost outpost of colonial French Louisiana. It was established in 1717 at the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers and was abandoned in 1763, after the Treaty of Paris. Andrew Jackson reestablished a fort here in 1814, following his defeat of the Creek Nation at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
17	Foster Auditorium	Tuscaloosa	Tuscaloosa	This was the site where, in 1963, the Alabama National Guard, Federal marshalls, and U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach escorted Vivian Malone past Alabama governor George C. Wallace during his infamous "Stand In The Schoolhouse Door". This was the first step in desegregating the University of Alabama and is seen as an important event in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
18	Gaineswood	Demopolis	Marengo	This is one of the United States' most unusual examples of Greek Revival architecture. It was built over the course of eighteen years by amateur architect and planter Nathan Bryan Whitfield. It is one of the few Greek Revivial homes that features the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders of architecture.
19	Government Street Presbyterian Church	Mobile	Mobile	Built in 1836 and is one of the oldest and least-altered Greek Revival church buildings in the United States. The architectural design is by James Gallier, James Dakin, and Charles Dakin.
20	Ivy Green	Tuscumbia	Colbert	This house, cottage, and water pump are where deaf and blind Helen Keller was born and learned to communicate, assisted with the aid of her teacher and constant companion, Anne Sullivan.
21	Kenworthy Hall	Marion	Perry	This plantation house was completed in 1860 and is one of the best preserved examples of Richard Upjohn's distinctive asymmetrical Italian villa style. It is the only surviving residential example of Upjohn's Italian villa style that was especially designed to suit the Southern climate and the plantation lifestyle.
22	Montgomery (snagboat)	Pickensville	Pickens	One of the few surviving steam-powered sternwheelers in the United States and is one of only two surviving United States Army Corps of Engineers snagboats. It was built in 1925 and played a major role in building the Alabama-Tombigbee-Tennessee River Project.
23	Montgomery Union Station and Trainshed	Montgomery	Montgomery	Constructed in 1898, this an excellent example of late 19th-century commercial architecture. It served as the focal point of transportation into Montgomery. The train shed is significant in that it shows the adaptation of bridge-building techniques to shelter structures, an important step in the history of American engineering.
24	Moundville Site	Moundville	Hale	Moundville was first settled in the 10th century and represents a major period of Mississippian culture in the Southern United States. It acted as the center for a southerly diffusion of this culture toward the Gulf Coast. It was the second largest site of the classic Middle Mississippian era, after Cahokia in Illinois.
25	Neutral Buoyancy Space Simulator	Huntsville	Madison	This structure was built in 1955 to provide a simulated zero-gravity environment in which engineers, designers, and astronauts could perform the various phases of research needed to gain firsthand knowledge concerning design and operation problems associated with working in the space. It contributed significantly to the United States space program, especially Project Gemini, the Apollo program, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle.
26	Propulsion and Structural Test Facility	Huntsville	Madison	This site was built in 1957 by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and was the primary center responsible for the development of large vehicles and rocket propulsion systems. The Saturn Family of launch vehicles was developed here under the direction of Wernher von Braun. The Saturn V remains the most powerful launch vehicle ever brought to operational status, from a height, weight and payload standpoint.
27	Redstone Test Stand	Huntsville	Madison	This steel frame structure was built in 1953 and is the oldest static firing facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center. It was important in the development of the Jupiter-C and Mercury/Redstone vehicles that launched the first U.S. satellite and the first U.S. manned spaceflight.
28	St. Andrew's Episcopal Church	Prairieville	Hale	This small Carpenter Gothic church with wooden buttresses was built in 1853 and shows the influence of 19th-century architectural leader Richard Upjohn. It is considered one of the Southeast's outstanding examples of the picturesque movement in American church building.
29	Saturn V Dynamic Test Stand	Huntsville	Madison	Built in 1964 to conduct mechanical and vibrational tests on the fully assembled Saturn V rocket, major problems capable of causing failure of the vehicle were discovered and corrected here.
30	Saturn V Launch Vehicle	Huntsville	Madison	This was the prototype for the Saturn V launch vehicle and was the first Saturn V constructed by the Marshall Space Flight Center under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun. It served as the test vehicle for all of the Saturn support facilities at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
31	Sixteenth Street Baptist Church	Birmingham	Jefferson	Used as a meeting place, training center, and as a departure point for marches during the Civil Rights Movement. It was the victim of a bombing by the Ku Klux Klan on 18 September 1963 in which four young girls were killed and twenty-two others were injured.
32	Sloss Blast Furnaces	Birmingham	Jefferson	Built from 1881 to 1882, this is the oldest remaining blast furnace in the state and represents Alabama's early 20th century preeminence in the production of pig iron and cast iron. It represents an example of a post-Civil War effort to industrialize the agrarian South.
33	Swayne Hall, Talladega College	Talladega	Talladega	Swayne Hall was built in 1857 as a Baptist men's college. Following the American Civil War, it became a part of Talladega College, Alabama's oldest private, historically black, liberal arts college.
	Tuskegee Institute	Tuskegee	Macon	One of the most well-known African American universities in the United States, it was founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881. It began with a curriculum designed to provide industrial and vocational education to African Americans and featured such acclaimed educators as George Washington Carver. Tuskegee Institute is both a National Historic Landmark and a National Historic Site.
35	Wilson Dam	Florence	Colbert and Lauderdale	Wilson Dam was built between 1918 and 1925 by the United States Army Corps of Engineers as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority's attempt to provide flood control, regulate the navigational channel, and provide electricity for the seven state Tennessee Valley region.
36	Yuchi Town Site	Fort Benning	Russell	An archaeological site with occupation by the Apalachicola and Yuchi tribes. The Apalachicola allied with the Spanish in Florida during the 17th century against the English in the Carolinas and were ultimately destroyed as a culture. The Yuchi constantly shifted their alliances with various European powers until they were displaced by the expanding American frontier in the Southeast in the early 19th century.

Former National Historic Landmark in Alabama

There is one site that had its status as a National Historic Landmark withdrawn.

	Landmark name	Image	Date declared	Locality	County	Description
	Yancey, William Lowndes, Law Office		1973, withdrawn in 1986	Montgomery	Montgomery	As a lawyer, populist legislator, firebrand orator, and party leader, William Lowndes Yancey was an important figure in sectional politics in the leadup to the Civil War. He gained national influence as an aggressive advocate of states' rights and exacerbated sectional differences that led to the secession of the Southern states from the Union. He had his law office in this building from 1846 until his death in 1863. Through successive modernizations and restorations in the 1970s and 1980s, the building lost much of the historic integrity for which it was originally designated a landmark, leading to the withdrawal of its designation. It was, however, retained on the National Register of Historic Places.

Historic areas in the United States National Park System

Historic area	Location	County	Description
Russell Cave National Monument	Bridgeport	Jackson	This monument was established on May 11, 1961, when 310 acres (1.3 km²) of land were donated by the National Geographic Society to the American people. With a mapped length of 7.2 miles (11.6 km), it is the third longest mapped cave in Alabama. Chipped flint points and charcoal from campfires provide evidence that occupation of Russell Cave began nearly 9,000 years ago by Archaic period Native Americans.
Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site	Tuskegee	Macon	This historic site at Moton Field commemorates the contributions of African American airmen in World War II. Moton Field was the site of primary flight training for the pioneering pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen. It was constructed in 1941 as a new training base. The field was named after former Tuskegee Institute principal Robert Russa Moton, who died the previous year.
Horseshoe Bend National Military Park	Alexander City	Tallapoosa	This was the site of the last battle of the Creek War on March 27, 1814. General Andrew Jackson's Tennessee militia, aided by the 39th U. S. Infantry Regiment and Cherokee and Creek allies, crushed the Creek Nation's Red Stick resistance at this site on the Tallapoosa River. Over 800 Upper Creeks died defending their homeland. This was the largest loss of life for Native Americans in a single battle in the history of United States.