ROADS in SOUTH HUNTSVILLE

Before electricity and 13th Avenue West Appliance (street name changed to Bob Wallace), Salt was in high demand for various uses including preservation of meats.  James White owned salt factories in East Tennessee and sometimes traded salt for land which he also did around the Tennessee River South of Huntsville and the Ditto’s Landing area became known as Whitesburg.  Whitesburg Drive opened in 1834 as a toll road until 1895. Whitesburg Drive was the main road in to the small downtown business hub until US 231 was built in the mid to late 1950s following much of Whitesburg Drive from the Tennessee River North to South Huntsville and then splitting due North at Cameron Drive/Cotton Gin and cutting through fields & farms and being West of the old downtown business hub.  This new main road did no good for the old established businesses that were now considered off the beaten path and many of these businesses relocated to the new Memorial Parkway
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Memorial Parkway commemorates soldiers from all wars.

Peter Weatherly from Scotland, purchased land here in 1823, built a log cabin and started farming, mostly cotton.  The Weatherly’s have been friends since the late 1960s and I would walk past their farm and farmhouse everyday on my way to Weatherly Elementary School.

I was driving on Weatherly Road one morning and saw smoke, stopped, got out of my car and developers were burning the old Weatherly Farm House to make room for the new residential development where Willow Cove Road is also now on the South side of Weatherly Road.  I had my camera and took two pictures of that old Farmhouse on fire.

We would also play in an old sawmill that cut the lumber to build most of the houses in our area  at the S.E. corner of Weatherly Road and a rock road (now Bailey Cove extending South of Weatherly Road.  The sawmill was torn down in the early 70s so we could ride our motorcycles, then the land was turned in to t-ball/baseball practice fields and it the present site of Hope Presbyterian Church.

The Bailey’s of Bailey Cove were here longer than a lot of the bigger land owners and many still live here today. I knew a Bailey family member at G.H.S and then know and sold land for her family on Bailey Cove Road.

The Hays family purchased land in 1909 from Samuel Moore and also began farming until Memorial Parkway came a calling and they came calling back with the biggest commercial retail center ever to hit South Huntsville and now the 2nd biggest thing to hit South Huntsville is the redevelopment of this land to The Market at Hays Farm and Hays Farm residential development.  Samuel Moore had several plantations and owned the famous prize winning milk producing cow Lily Flagg of which there is a street named in South Huntsville.  The Hays family has been in residential & commercial building & development for several decades and I have known the family since the mid-1980s.

The Fleming family also purchased large tracts of land in South Huntsville and has been building and developing their land for decades and I have also know this family since the mid-1980s.

Drake Avenue is named after John Drake who was a Revolutionary War soldier and purchased land in Madison County in 1815. The land covers all land along Drake Avenue and into Drake’s Cove what is now Jones Valley.  Tom Drake, a former Principal of the old Grissom High School is a descendent and a long-time friend.  The Garth’s purchased Drake’ Cove in 1881 and in 1940, Edwin & Carl Jones purchased it from the Garth estate.

The original home on Garth Road, now owned by Jones descendants, was built by James Drake in the 1820s.

I have walked, mini-biked, motorcycled and drove all over South Huntsville and have stories within stories within stories.