Nine miles west of Selma, where the Cahaba River flows into the Alabama River, an entire town sits empty. Old Cahawba was Alabama’s first permanent state capital, and today Spanish moss hangs from its oaks while grass covers what used to be streets.
You can walk, bike, or drive over four miles of dirt roads through the ruins, past crumbling columns and old cemeteries where gravestones still stand. The Alabama Historical Commission runs the site, which landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
What you find here is part outdoor museum, part nature preserve, and all of it is wide open…