About 20 years ago, the Tuscaloosa News had a promotion where they asked their readers to write the paper and tell them why you loved T-town. I think there were some "I 💗 T-town" bumper stickers that were part of the promotion. I sent in an entry and it was the last one of all the ones they published and I liked that. It went like this:

Standing on an old street corner laid out in 1821 

Shaded by Druid oaks all around.

That's why I love T-town.

Sitting on a sandy bank

With my feet in the river

While the sun goes down.

That's why I love T-town

  That "old street corner laid out in 1821" would be part of Tuscaloosa's original street grid, virtually unchanged for 203 years, which was carved out of a wilderness by the order of President James Monroe five years after the Indians lost their title to the property in 1816. The land had been reserved from public sale because the federal government wanted it subdivided into a town which would stand on the south bank of the Black Warrior River.  The one square mile township section on which the streets were platted was located on the spot where navigation on the river ended and a series of rapids prevented further navigation north from the Gulf.  The main street in old Tuscaloosa, now called University Boulevard, ran parallel to the river from the southwest to the northeast along the crest of the hill that rose up on its south bank. About midway along the path of this main Street and perpendicular to it was Market Street, now called Greensboro Avenue, which ran south from the river wharf up the river hill to the southern margin of the Old Town. All the other streets in Old Town ran parallel to either Main or Market Streets.

A visitor from Cleveland, Ohio in 1884 accurately described Tuscaloosa's founding:  

"The site for this contemplated city was exceedingly well chosen and the fathers are entitled to credit perhaps I should say the father for our Uncle Samuel selected the locality and engineered the city reserving from private entry or public sale upon the usual terms a goodly tract of land which was sold off only in town lots to people who were sagacious and farseeing and desired a pleasant and salubrious locality in which to drink their mint julips and entertain their friends while their faithful retainers toiled in the cotton fields far down the fertile valley below the town. They were good people as the world went then, those planters of the olden time, albeit they differed from us of the North as to some essentials of a Christian life and they are good people today such of them as are left and very creditable representatives of the great American nation and I think they were never so bitter at heart toward their brethren of the North as were some others in less favored localities who had really less to lose by the upsetting of old usages and the liberation of the slaves.

"The town was regularly laid out by competent engineers who had an eye to the picturesque and magnificent and the streets were plotted with reference to the requirements of a to be renowned seat of government. Since land was of no great consequence in those days it was allowed that 132 feet was none too wide for the streets and now that the sidewalks are bordered with rows of mighty water oaks from two to three feet in diameter with a central row down the middle of each principal street it does not appear that the fathers of the city miscalculated matters nor were otherwise than level-headed folks."

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME.

Why am I not surprised? About what? Why am I not surprised that with all the HYSTERICAL COMMISSIONS, museum "curators", "patriotic" organizations, "preservationists", "civic" organizations, "historians" and "social studies teachers" in this PITIFUL world, I AM THE ONLY SOUL WHO RECOGNIZES THAT 200 YEARS AGO TODAY, on Monday, DECEMBER 23, 1816, the first legislation to establish a state government for the people of PRESENT-DAY ALABAMA was read on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. (that should give you an idea of just how well your "ALABAMA BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION" is progressing)
A BILL TO ESTABLISH THE TERRITORY OF MOBILE
December 23, 1816
Read twice and committed to the committee of the whole House, on the bill "to enable the people of the western part of the Mississippi Territory to form a Constitution and State Government and for the admission of such State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States."
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015010692468;view=1up;seq=28

The Pleasures of Hope: Part 1

The Pleasures of Hope: Part 1 by Thomas Campbell - Famous poems, famous poets. - All Poetry

At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering bills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky ?
Why do those clifts of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near ?—
'T is distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
Thus, with delight, we linger to survey
The promised joys of life's unmeasured way;
Thus, from afar, each dim-discovered scene
More pleasing seems than all the past hath been,
And every form, that Fancy can repair
From dark oblivion, glows divinely there.