Alabama · Historic site
Cahaba
The first permanent capital of Alabama, given up to the river that flooded it repeatedly, now a park of foundations and standing chimneys.
Position Dallas County, Alabama · 32.3169, -87.1014
Cahaba, sometimes spelled Cahawba, was the first permanent state capital of Alabama from 1820 to 1825, and remained the county seat of Dallas County until 1866. It sits at the confluence of the Alabama and Cahaba rivers.
That confluence is why the town existed and why it failed. Seasonal flooding was constant, and after the legislature moved the capital to Tuscaloosa in 1826 the place lost its reason to endure the water. A further major flood in 1865 pushed the county seat to Selma.
What remains is an archaeological park: street grid, foundations, standing chimneys with no houses around them, cemeteries, and a great deal of vegetation. It is one of the few genuinely abandoned townsites in the Deep South that is publicly accessible.
It is a different sort of ruin from a western mining camp. Nothing here was built to be temporary, and it emptied anyway.
Facts checked against the Wikipedia article Cahaba, Alabama. The words above are ours.