The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-09-18
THE STORY OF ALICEVILLE,
 ONLY TWO YEARS OF AGE
Splendid Work Done by Railroads in Develop ing the Rich Farming Lands and Wealth
 of Timber in Pickens County.
BY WILL T. STEPHAN.

Aliceville, Sept. 17.-~(Special Corres- pondence. )--The material for another Flush Times in Alabama" is at hand. It only awaits the pen of another | talented genius, like 10 Baldwin. who in his series of sketches of Alabama in the early days wrote one of the best books ever published on provincial life in the United States.
 | The golden days of opportunity of which he wrote are in way being duplicated after sixty years of waiting There is no epoch making boom, as m the days of which Baldwin wrote. when he penned his fascinating stories of West Alabama life. But in lesser degree the same sort of rapid growth is going on in this county of Pickens and in other counties that join 1t. Fortunes are not piled up now with the rapidity that marked the times when in Alabama the earth was young and every goose was a swan. The opulent days of which Baldwin wrote have not returned in full. but there is develop ment in progress, so general and so marked that his successor with the descriptive pen, if there was such one could find full material for another series of most readable sketches.
 The railroads have been fulfilling | their usual mission of laying founda- tions and building prosperity. New arteries of trade are now running through the old county of Pickens and that which courses along them gives l life and strength. The man who does not give credit to railroads for con structing, for development, for build I ing up, is man who Is either blinded 1 by prejudice or soddened by ignorance. | He may assert, and with truthfulness, that the endeavers of a railroad that make for prosperity are efforts that | Iat,r selfish interests. But even if the rail- roads do what they do for a general building up through selfish motives, the | work is none the less well done for all that. And just now Pickens Coun- | ty is one of the sections of the State which is indebted to the railroads for the foundations of 8 new prosperity. i Railroads in Pickens.
 | Pickens has been lucky in railroad building in recent years. The county was cut in two in the northern half some years ago by the line of the Mobile and Ohio from Montgomery to Artesia It was the first road to be built through this rich old agricultural county. Pickens was one of the "strangulated" counties of the State previous to the accomplishment of that undertaking by the Mobile and Ohio. 1 The term was invented to describe the condition of those counties which were l still paying taxes and interest on bonds the county endorsed to get a railroad through it. A few years after the war a railroad was projected through Pick ems County and the officials, with of- fcials of other counties, pledged the county for the face value of the bonds. In the limits of Pickens County not a single tie of that road was ever laid. Something was wrong in the way the county made its contract with the rail- 1 road, for 1t had to pay the interest on those bonds, the same as if the road had been built from end to end of the county.
 So. for year after year. the people of Pickens County paid their annual railroad tax for railroad that ex- isted only in imagination and on the | tax books of the county. The county, however, kept faith with the purchasers of the bonds and the tax was regularly paid.
 A new era came with the building of the Mobile and Ohio through West Ala bama. It's survey took 1t through the northern portion of the county almost east and west. It did not touch the richest agricultural section of Pickens, but it did run through the richly tim bered portion of the county. The road was built near to the mineral section Of the State, in its entire course through Alabama. The mineral deposits run far down into Tuscaloosa County and the railroad builders put down their tracks where they could get some of the coal and iron business.
 It revived Pickens County, however, and gave 1t new life. The story of the town of Gordo is illustrative of this, Gordo was an old town, a settle- ment little more than post office and a store or two, where the small farmer
 
 hills to trade. Gordo was a mile or so from the line of the road, but when the first trains were run through 1t moved close up and developed Into a lively and prosperous country town. Ii has now perhaps the largest population of any place in the county. although the county seat of Carollton, which has also felt the impetus of the new era might feel inclined to dispute this as- sertion.
 The Timber Interests.
 But Gordo was not the only town the Mobile and Ohio made. The new saw mills. the new people and the new farms demanded other towns and Re- form. Ethelsville and other places came into being. The history of North Pickens has been the history of every section in Alabama when the wealth producing and wealth developing rail- roads came in.
 A new force came into the COu1ily several years ago. It was in the per son of an aggressive and intelligent young man gifted with the foresight and determination which marks the successful man of affairs He was John T. Cochrane and he came out Of Tuscaloosa. He was member of one of the prominent West Alabama fami- lies. a home product and thoroughly familiar with the people and the con- ditions of that section. From his very boyhood he had shouldered important responsibilities and he had acquitted himself with so much credit that the success of the future was foreshadow- ed
 |. He came into Pickens County with his brains. energy and capital fresh from the management of the Tuscaloo- sa Belt Railroad. the dummy line running through Tuscaloosa and its suburbs and which has SO helped all the places it has touched. MT. -Coch- rane 1t Is said. had done more for the lline and g,Nten bigger returns from 1t than at any time during It's history. He conceived the idea of building a rail-
 road down from the northern portion of Pickens to the great cotton planta-
 fins of Its Southern end. It is not
 generally known. but 1t is fact. that some of the most fertile and some of
 the very richest acres in all Alabama lie along the southern portion of Pick
 ems County. Even today in the gath
 erine season of very discouraging cotton year one hears of "a bale to the acre crop" in the dark gray cotton