Hollis - See Alabama first: the story of Alabama tourism

This vintage postcard map of Alabama includes many of the attractions and tourist sites we will be visiting in the pages to comebut naturally, not nearly all of them.

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2013 by Tim Hollis

All rights reserved

Images are courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.

First published 2013

e-book edition 2013

Manufactured in the United States

ISBN 978.1.61423.883.6

Library of Congress CIP data applied for.

print edition ISBN 978.1.60949.488.9

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Contents

Introduction

Everybody Get in the Car

I would venture a guess that a good number of the people reading these words will already be familiar with at least some of the other books I have done on the subject of tourism history. No, that is not the only thing in my catalogue, but it seems to be a subject that always has still-untapped potential. I have devoted volumes and thousands of words to the history of the attractions in other states, primarily Florida and Tennessee, and now it is time to turn that sort of attention to my home state.

I was born in Birmingham, so it is natural that I have that as my first point of reference. My family didnt travel much for the first few years of my lifemy dad being a junior high school teacher and my mom never working outside the home once I was born no doubt had a lot to do with our financial positionbut in August 1966, Paw and Maw Hollis managed to scrape up enough dough to send us on our first family vacation, to the Great Smoky Mountains and the wonders of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Cherokee, North Carolina.

We must have enjoyed ourselvesor at least some of us did. My mom hated traveling until the day she died. She would much rather have stayed home and watched television with a cat in her lap, but somehow or other, the very next month after our excursion to the Smokies, we were on the road again. This time, we would be sampling more of what Alabama had to offer.

My dad was meticulous in keeping up with postcards and brochures and noting the dates on each of them. From this, I know that we ventured first to Mobile and Dauphin Island on September 9, 1966. Even though I was only three and a half years old, I do have a few memories of that trip, including an uncomfortable moment at Fort Gaines when some of the prickly cockleburs so common in semi-tropical climates stuck to my socks and felt like a swarm of bees had moved in for the kill. Photos show us prowling the decks of the USS Alabama, which had been moved to Mobile and restored as an attraction only the year before. Back on the mainland, we stayed at the small Bamboo Motel in Saraland before continuing the trip to the other side of Mobile Bay and onward to Fort Walton Beach, Florida. The Bamboo Motel might not have been anything spectacular, but I recall reading out the letters on its lighted sign underneath the portico in front of the office. (Yes, I had already learned to read by then.)

Yes, thats the author at age three, touring the decks of the USS Alabama in September 1966. The World War II battleship had not been open to tourists for very long at that point.

During that 1966 trip, somehow my dad must have elected to bypass Alabamas own Gulf Coast in favor of Floridas Miracle Strip, but we made up for that in the summer of 1967 by traveling down to Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and Fort Morgan. By chance, I have a postcard my dad mailed to someone back home from that trip, and to this day, one of his statements is a puzzle to me. After stating that we were having the time of our lives (no doubt my moms attitude about it notwithstanding), my dad wrote that I, especially, was enjoying the water. What is so puzzling about that for a four-year-old, you ask? Simply that no one in my family, including me, ever learned how to swimso I fail to understand how I could have been enjoying the water except perhaps by just looking at it or dipping my toes into the salty brine. Lifes full of unsolved mysteries, isnt it?

From that point onward, we seem to have done a pretty good job of mixing in visits to Alabamas attractions along with our trips to other states. The big difference was that since just about anywhere in Alabama could be reached in only a few hours, except the beaches, we mostly toured the state as short weekend or single-day trips, reserving our longer, more involved drives for other places. Before the 1960s ended, we had visited most of the Alabama attractions at least once. I know that we were back in Mobile again on July 20, 1969, when my dad noted on a postcard that we watched the astronauts land on the moon in our room at a Holiday Inn. (Well, the moon wasnt in our room, but you know what I mean, so lay off the smart remarks.)

Besides saving postcards and brochures, my dad was an avid amateur photographer, so the images he made with his mid-1950s 35mm camera were, in many ways, the record of my life. Only occasionally would there be malfunctions, usually once the camera began getting old. For example, in 1970 we went to Jasmine Hill Gardens to take in the scenery and all the replicas of classic Grecian art, but all of our photos from that visit look like the camera lens was coated with Vaseline. Such anomalies were rare, although I have to admit that once we replaced the old reliable 35mm with Kodaks newer, smaller Pocket Instamatic, the quality of the resulting photos went straight downhill. It is fine and dandy to be nostalgic about the old days, but digital photography is one modern-day improvement that I wish fervently had been available back then.

Just as none of us ever learned to swim, neither were we a camping family, much preferring a carpeted, air-conditioned room in a motel to the great outdoors. (Since our home did not have central air conditioning until 1973, it was indeed a rare treat to spend a hot summer day in the comfort of a Holiday Inn, Best Western or some independent motel.) We would occasionally take a picnic lunch to one of the places frequented by more nature-loving families, such as Sportsmans Lake Park in Cullman or the Guntersville entry in the chain of Yogi Bears Jellystone Park Campgrounds, but not very often. We visited the now-forgotten Canyon Land Park near Fort Payne in 1974, and my Pocket Instamatic photos of that attraction would have been much better had I managed to keep my finger from in front of the lens in most of them.

So, from an early age I had enough background to do this book but did not really think about how to put it all together until The History Press and I were discussing possible projects to follow the three other books I have done for them. (Counting all of my other publishers too, this is book number twenty-two for me.) No one had ever approached the subject of Alabamas tourism history before, at least not in the way I deal with such subjects, so the project received the green light with a minimum of stress.