The DeKalb Hotel

The DeKalb Hotel was built in 1889 at the height of Fort Payne's boom period. The three-story Hotel had 125 room running water and electricity and was intended to house New England executives and their families who would be visiting the Fort Payne area. The park across the street from the hotel was named Union Park to make the northern visitors feel more at home. The Boom was short-lived and when the northern investors left town the hotel fell on Hard Tunes and eventually became low rent apartments. In February 1918 a fire started in one of the rooms and the Dekalb Hotel burned to the ground. Today nothing remains of the hotel except one of the French fountains which is displayed across the street in the park. The site of the hotel itself is now better known as the Salvation Army parking lot.

W.V Graves Store in Fyffe

W..V Graves Store opened in Fyffe Alabama around 1905 and was pretty much the center of the community being the general store and the post office. The store was located on the old road to Rainsville at the Crossing where the road met with what is now Church Street. I was allowed to do a small excavation there several years ago and recovered this gas light fixture some door hinges, nails Etc.

1923 Ford Model T

Believe it or not this pile of metal is All That Remains of a 1923 Ford touring car. The Ford Model T was the first American car built by assembly line for the 1909 model year and was produced with relatively few changes until the 1927 model year when it was discontinued. The Model T was produced in many different configurations with the Runabout and the touring car being the most popular because they were the most reasonably priced due to having a retractable canvas roof. In those days you had to pay extra if you wanted a metal roof over your head and doors with windows that rolled up. I located this car near Boaz Alabama and as you can see it has seen better days. I seriously doubt this car has been on the road in the past 70 years but even lying in somber repose its Majesty as an icon of American Automobile engineering is firmly intact.

Remembering Party Line Phones

In today's age of smartphones that do everything from making a phone call to playing video games and watching videos it is difficult to imagine that in some cases it wasn't that long ago that shared party line telephony was common.

I was born in 1970 and for the first ten years of my life my family was on a party-line system. In fact it wasn't until 1981 that every phone in the Rainsville Exchange had been converted to a single line system.

Like the internet today party line telephones in their life span became a way to spy on your neighbors and listening to other people's telephone calls became a local sport.

Most of the United States had converted to the single line system by the 1960s but here on Sand Mountain the old party line held sway for another generation or to put it in perspective my family was finally rid of the party line three years before the first cellular telephone network went online.

The next time you pick up your iPhone or Android put it into perspective and remember that not so long ago we were picking up the receiver of a Western Electric 500 and hoping that no one else was already on the line.

Pterotype

This machine is the pterotype invented by John Pratt of Centre Alabama in 1866. Pratt was a writer and the editor of the Gadsden Times. Due to economic hardships brought on by the Civil War Pratt was unable to find funding to market the device however Christopher Sholes would be inspired by the pterotype when he designed the first commercially successful typewriter which became the Remington Model 1 in 1873.