
I’ve recently had the privilege of fact-checking a fascinating article about the history of Florence, Alabama. The article makes one thing very clear: While the Tennessee River was an invaluable resource for industry, most people would have preferred that the Muscle Shoals just did not exist. The Shoals made transportation next to impossible, and people were clamoring for Congress to do something about it more than a decade before Florence was founded. I discovered, however, that the earlier inhabitants of North Alabama—the Native Americans—had a much different perspective of the Shoals.