Robert F. Henry Lock and Dam
Upriver just over a mile above Benton Park, the final upper impoundment on the Alabama River is held in place against the Robert F. Henry Lock and Dam. In doing so it creates the Robert E. “Bob” Woodruff Lake. Two parks at the dam, East Bank and West Bank, serve the public and boaters.
The banks are steep enough in this part of the river that lock operation and water level control by the dam do not appreciably change the width of the river.
As for fishing, bass thrive here because of their opportunity to stuff themselves with shad. The river is home to a lot of crappie, which make for great fishing early in the year. Hybrid striped bass, white bass, channel cat, blue and flathead catfish are to be found in quantity below the dam, where they may be fished from bank or boat. A fishing deck has been constructed on each bank near the dam.

Prairie Creek Campground
Two miles towards Montgomery from the Robert F. Henry Lock & Dam is Prairie Creek Campground, one of the finest on the river. Prairie Creek is a haven for the paddler and powerboater. Its proximity to the wide, quiet backwaters of Prairie Creek (not to mention the low, gentle banks and their easy access to land) make it a great place to paddle.
The concrete aprons at the campground will accommodate all your serious toys, but the campsites are designed to befriend the modest camper as well. The double-loop at Prairie Creek gives you the option of creek-side or river-side campsites, many with wooden decks extending near or over the water. Trees hung with Spanish moss are everywhere at Prairie Creek, enhancing the privacy of each site and the beauty of this gem upon the river.

Naturalist Nugget: In a tight bend where Brown’s Branch comes into the river, is stunning House Bluff, a steep earth wall showing hundreds of layers of geological deposits. House Bluff is, geologically speaking, the southernmost tip of the Appalachian Mountains.

Holy Ground Battlefield Park
Holy Ground Battlefield Park, where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operates a day-use park with all the amenities the river traveler might want other than fuel and food, features a boat launch, pavilions (with interpretive signage) and foot trails can be found there.
Holy Ground Battlefield is a place of immense, if sad, historical significance. The massacre of white settlers by Indians further down the Alabama at Fort Mims sent shockwaves of fear through the state’s fledgling settlements, and both whites and Indians were using reprisals and counter-reprisals to spread hatred and garner support for their own causes. Reeling from the sharp reprisals and simultaneously stirred up by British agents who saw any trouble in the Alabama frontier as a way to divert the country’s military away from the main fronts in the War of 1812, leaders of the Indians’ pro-war Red Stick faction gathered fighters and families alike at Holy Ground. They convinced their followers that with their feet on this soil, the white man’s bullets would have no effect on them. The cost of that folly was enormous to the Indians who took refuge here. Their leader, William Weatherford, the last Indian to retreat, is said to have made a daring escape from the battle by leaping from the riverbank and swimming the river mounted on his horse, Arrow, with his rifle held over his head and with bullets splattering the water around him.

Naturalist Nugget: This stretch of the river, down to Selma and many miles beyond, is a particularly pleasant and scenic stretch for the boater. The sinuous path of the river alternates between low banks and high bluffs, some of them quite breathtaking. Multiple American bald eagles can be seen here simultaneously; one or more great blue herons seem to dominate every turn in the river’s course; and numerous anhinga and ducks can be seen in a single outing. Spanish moss creates an atmosphere of comfortable gloom as the river rolls past and through which the calls of busy waterfowl and shorebirds are heard.

At mile 253.2, a few miles below Autaugaville and two miles above Holy Ground Battlefield Park lies the Union steamboat Autaugi. The Autaugi went down in 1865 with the bodies of dead soldiers that had been reclaimed from the Confederate prison camp at Cahaba for their final journey home after the end of the war.

Montgomery RiverWalk
Adjacent to Union Station, on a place once called Hostile Bluff by early Alabama settlers, is Montgomery’s excellent RiverWalk. The park was built between the river and the mouth of the old tunnel where horses once drew cotton and cargo between the city’s docks and Coosa Street. The sprawling park is s combination of almost every activity the city has to offer. The city’s active public amphitheater is located here as is a large splashpad water park for children to enjoy on hot days. RiverWalk Stadium is home to the Southern League’s Montgomery Biscuits. This minor league ballpark opened in 2004 and hosts up to 7,000 visitors a night. Standing adjacent to the RiverWalk is Union Station, built in 1898 and once served the city with forty-four trains per day.  Today, Union Station houses the city’s main visitor’s center and gift shop.

A short walk from your landing at RiverWalk will bring you to the doors of the Station. Inside you will find a wealth of information about what to see and do in Montgomery, and you will find a gift shop filled with souvenirs and remembrances as well as important historical information. Even better, a walk out the front door will take you to the city’s tourist trolley system. It stops at many attractions along its two fixed routes. Each trolley rounds one route, returns to the Union Station, and then goes on the next route.  Along the route, you can signal a stop.  The pick-up points are at major attractions along the route.

The City of Montgomery
From the river, the RiverWalk includes the white, tent like amphitheater on the left bank. A dock below the amphitheater provides shore access and presents a series of steps up to an area of grassy lawn and ancient brickwork, and the mouth of a tunnel. This tunnel is the remains of the old freight slide where stevedores hauled cotton and other goods between the decks of visiting steamboats and the cobblestones of Commerce Street. Up the slide, now a walking path beneath the railroad tracks, and a turn to the right is Union Station, a Montgomery landmark that once was the terminus of rail traffic into the city. Today, Union Station serves as offices, gift shop, a tourism information point for all of downtown and the area, and a Thai restaurant. The inside of the station is the best place to pick up information about sights and entertainment. The front of the station is the place to step onto a trolley and make your way around town on a historic tour of the city.

A brief self-guided walking tour of Montgomery is a great way to get your land legs back and immerse yourself in an unforgettable afternoon of adventure. Leaving the RiverWalk up the old freight tunnel will put you into sunlight on Commerce Street with Union Station to your right. The Visitors Center on the building’s ground floor will provide you with virtually everything to know about the city. From there, proceed to the Rosa Parks museum. The next few blocks to the roundabout at Court Square should be done with one eye out for the easy-going traffic in the area and the other eye upon the architectural details overhead. At Court Square, Commerce Street turns left to become Dexter Avenue and the view up the hill aims at the state’s Greek revival capitol.

A block before the capitol is the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where the Reverend Martin Luther King pondered and then acted out his part in the nation’s civil rights struggle that at the time centered upon the Alabama capital. One block uphill to the right from the church and across the street from each other stand the old and the new buildings of the Southern Poverty Law Center. It was here that the remnants of power held in the 1990s by the Ku Klux Klan were finally stripped away. Its slanting concrete ramparts, laid as a deterrent to potential truck bombs, evidence the new, much larger building. Across the street at the old Center, the Civil Rights Memorial and its stunning memorial fountain (designed by Maya Lin, who also designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial), whose flat, black surface sheds water along its circumference, whose edge is a timeline of the grievous loss of forty victims of that struggle.

Just two blocks east of the Southern Poverty Law Center and one block downhill toward the Capitol is the First White House of the Confederacy, home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis while the capital of the Confederacy was located in Montgomery. The building now houses many items of historical interest.

Walking back to the RiverWalk and Union Station area is St. John’s Episcopal Church (on Madison Street at it intersects with Perry Street). Within the spacious and beautiful old church are found its comfortable wooden pews—comfortable all except for one, whose straight back and bottom are not contoured, as are the others, to fit the human form. This was the pew of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, respect for whom has left the original to resist attempts to modernize it. The church’s magnificent stained glass windows were created in the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Back in our powerboat, canoe or kayak, your tour of Montgomery returns to the water and you leave Montgomery where the Marquis de Lafayette left it in 1825 and head as he did toward Selma.
On the left bank of the next north-bound stretch of the river, where Maxwell Air Force Base now lies, is the site selected by aviator brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright for the nation’s first commercial aviation training school. The history of the area is interwoven with the history of flight since its inception after the turn of the 20th century, and nearby Tuskegee is known as the home of the brave airmen who were, in World War Two, the first black aviators to train to defend their country.

Swift Creek Park
Though not having the amenities of some other parks, Swift Creek Park in Autaugaville is a very popular launch on Woodruff Lake.

Gunter Hill Campground
Gunter Hill Campground is probably the best of the US Army Corps of Engineers Campgrounds along the Alabama River, and that’s saying something. Isaac Creek, Millers Ferry and Prairie Bluff campgrounds are outstanding places not only for their amenities, but for the lands and waters they are situated upon as well. But Gunter Hill, just a half-hour drive from downtown Montgomery, has recently undergone a very expensive facelift. The campground, now as charming as it is functional, is located on Catoma Creek and possesses every amenity to support fishing, children’s play, picnicking, boating and camping in anything from a tent to the largest RV.

Catoma Creek was the birthplace of David Moniac, who was the first “mixed-race” graduate of West Point in the class of 1822. He died in the Seminole War of 1836.

561 Booth Rd, Montgomery, Alabama 36108
GPS: 32.358648, -86.452431
Local Directions: From I-65, take Exit 167 onto US 80 west for 9 miles. Turn right on County Road 7. Follow signs into the campground
334 269 1053

Cooters Pond
Cooters Pond, a generous lake connecting the town of Prattville with the Alabama River, has numerous picnic sites, a hiking trail, an overlook, a ballpark, large pavilions, and a boat launch. The park may also be used as an overnight paddler’s campsite. Fishing, boating and camping information for R. E. “Bob” Woodward Lake is available from the Prattville Chamber of Commerce at 800 588 2796.

Powder Magazine Park
Rounding the bend into the bluffs over the river in Montgomery, Powder Magazine Park sits on the bank near the downtown part of the city. A boat ramp provides river access with plenty of parking for boat trailers and vehicles. A shelter provides an opportunity for a picnic under the stand of mature trees that covers the park.

Montgomery Marina
At mile 288 on the Alabama River the Montgomery Marina is situated. Renowned for decades under the operation of the salty Captain Pat Dozier, who knew the Alabama River like few others, the Marina served as Montgomery’s only access to the river. Until the city’s RiverWalk was created, the business of recreation was centered upon the Marina and to a large extent this is true today.

The Marina was recently purchased by Lewis Mashburn, owner of the legendary Capitol Oyster Bar, which deserved its reputation as the meeting place of the best blues music and the best seafood in Montgomery. Mashburn moved his venue to the Marina and adapted the building into another successful music and food venue. The Marina is still the main recreational connection with the Alabama River, but is also the place to spend a happy afternoon or evening with a great view of the water. The best blues artists from all over the US can be heard at the Marina’s stage.
617 Shady Street, Montgomery, 36104. 334 239 8958.  www.capitoloysterbar.com.

Fort Toulouse Historical Site
Fort Toulouse is located where the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers join to form the Alabama River.

Some of the most sweeping events in our nation’s history turned on the fortunes of the soldiers, traders and Indians of Fort Toulouse. The French established the fort in 1717 on a narrow bluff separating the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers.

The site had been used as a campsite for archaic hunters some 5,000 years before. Sometime after AD 1200, a palisaded Mississippian town with three ceremonial town was built here as part of the mound-builders culture.

The Creek Indians called the place “Franca choka chula,” or Old French Trading House. The English reached the forks of the Alabama by 1690, but the fort kept them from establishing a foothold.

Transportation to reach civilization was not easy. For the French, Mobile was reached by boats rowed by Indians 357 miles to the south, a distance that took seven days to achieve (an average of 51 miles per day). The Fort was 425 long miles from Charles Town (Charleston) by packhorse.

The French abandoned the Fort in 1763 as the French relinquished their holdings in the region. It was to be rebuilt in 1814 as Ft Jackson when Andrew Jackson was sent into Alabama to prosecute the Creek Wars, the Indians’ loss of which ended with their loss of lands and expulsion on the Trail of Tears.

During the American operation of the Fort, such notables as Andrew Jackson; Chief Red Eagle; and the creator of our national anthem Francis Scott Key walked its grounds.

The ramparts of Ft Jackson exist today, as does a functional replica of the French Fort at what is now known as the Fort Toulouse-Fort Jackson State Historic Site. Open year-round, visitors can step back in time through realistically recreated French and American encampments. Almost every month includes a weekend of living military history as well as daily living. The park features a 39-site campground with full hookups and a bathhouse. Each November, the Fort brings history to life during weeklong Frontier Days during which thousands of visitors mingle with authentic citizens of long ago.

For more information about visiting, camping or attending events at the fort, call 334 567 3002.
Access, Parks and Campground along the Alabama River

Rules and regulations

Most of the facilities mentioned in this article and shown on the attending map are on properties operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers. A link to their Rules and Regulations  follows. Consult the Contact Information provided for Rules and  Regulations of other properties you might visit:
http://corpslakes.usace.army.mil/employees/visitassist/pdfs/title36-lrl.pdf

Universal Access Policies

It is the policy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to provide universally accessible recreation opportunities for all people. The Corps will ensure that all new and existing facilities and programs meet or exceed current guidelines.  Some existing facilities are continuing to be retro-fitted as funding allows.