An Alabama ghost town
Claiborne was a thriving port on the Alabama River in the mid-1800s, said Sarah Kershsaw in The New York Times. Today only a few original homes still stand near “an overgrown river landing and three 18th-century cemeteries.” At its peak in the 1830s, Claiborne’s population reached about 5,000. Back then the town—an hour and half’s drive northeast of Mobile—was surrounded by cotton gins. Then yellow fever and cholera struck, and after the Civil War the town was looted “for days, leaving little behind.” Claiborne became a ghost town when trains made the shipping of cotton by steamboat obsolete. Agee Broughton, who lives in one of the few remaining houses, gives occasional tours of about a dozen 19th-century homes in the area. The Monroe County Heritage Museums in nearby Monroeville also give tours of its courthouse—“the model for the courtroom scene in To Kill a Mockingbird.”
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