ALONG THE COOSA RIVER — Paddlers in the small flotilla of canoes and kayaks struggled against a stiff wind howling up the Coosa River.It had been this way most of the morning, the strong breeze and the lapping waves on the surface of what had become Weiss Lake. But at a spot just shy of the Alabama line, at the end of a long straight-a-way, bobbed a welcoming crew on three pontoon boats giving strength and courage to the boaters who were set to open one of Alabama’s newest attractions.
If they were to be so brave — on this day none of the 10 paddlers were — they could break the red ribbon ahead and travel the length of the state. For stretching out before them was the entirety of Weiss Lake, the length of the Coosa and the Alabama rivers, the meandering waterways of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta and the expanse of Mobile Bay.
It is, in its totality, the new Alabama Scenic River Trail, a leisurely float of 631 miles that runs from here near the top of Alabama to the bottom, one continuous connection of water that now stands out as the longest river trail in a single state in the nation.
It was an audacious idea born in the mind of Anniston’s Fred Couch, longtime river enthusiast and assisted and carried along by Annistonian Charlie Doster and Thornton Clark of Montgomery. They in turn, according to Couch, were assisted by some 250 people, entities such as the Rotary Club, the Cherokee Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alabama Power and the Boy Scouts, especially Anniston’s Troop 9 and their former Scout master Robert Jackson.
“What we have created,” Couch said as he pushed his canoe into the Coosa River just east of the Alabama/Georgia state line, “is a legacy. Because everyone believed in this dream, it has become a reality for the good of the state.”
There are nine dams between the Georgia line and Fort Morgan, the official end point of the trail at the mouth of Mobile Bay. Alabama Power, which owns six of the dams and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, set up permanent portages around the sites.
Power boats can travel the lower part of the trail passing through locks, making the trip from Montgomery to Mobile easily in a few days.
Although Sunday’s event was a celebration of sorts at the beginning of the trail, the actual official opening ceremony will take place at the River Walk in Montgomery on June 6. Other ceremonies will take place in Gadsden and in Selma.
Richard Grove of Cumming, Ga., was in the flotilla that crossed the state line on Sunday. Although the 60-year-old will not travel the entire distance this time, he has made this journey once before, in 2006.
“That trip took me 49 glorious days,” he said.
Grove, an old hand at paddling — before blazing the Alabama River trial, he paddled the Chattahoochee River from Buford Dam north of Atlanta to the Gulf of Mexico — says that a series of rapids just north of Wetumpka and the slow-flowing waters through the Mobile-Tensaw Delta on the lower part of the trail are his favorite parts of the trail.
Then he added, “You know, when you are out paddling down the river by yourself, when it’s just you and nature. Well, it can be a very touching, very warm experience.”
The economics
Proponents of the trial also believe its economic impact on the state could be substantial.
“We have had advisors from Alabama and Auburn working on this with us,” said Clark, a 70-year-old retired banker from Montgomery. “They believe that the impact could be in the tens of millions of dollars.”
Brian Jones of the Alabama Bureau of Tourism and Travel, said the state has already seen tourism grow by 30 percent in the past four years and that the addition of the trail is only going to bring more dollars into the state.
Noting stories in The New York Times and USA Today about the River Trail, Jones said that it has already generated an enormous amount of publicity, “and it hasn’t even officially opened yet.”
Theresa Hulgan, president of the Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce, said the county already realizes some $15 million a year from tourism money and that the trail should only increase that amount.
“We are at the beginning of this trail,” she said as she bobbed aboard a pontoon boat in the Coosa. “We’re used to lots of fishermen, but we’re hoping this will also attract another kind of clientele, the more adventurous.”
Along the way
Of course there is more to the Alabama Scenic Trail then just a continuous stretch of water. Signs will point paddlers and power boaters the way, especially when they reach the impossibly complicated maze of passages in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. Portage trails are clearly marked with signs and buoys.
Jim Felder, an environmental writer who has penned several books on Alabama rivers, has not paddled the entire stretch but has been on many sections of the trail.
For him one of the most valuable things about the new trail is that it could reawaken the public to a big chunk of Alabama history.
He points to historic sites such as Fort Toulouse-Fort Jackson State Historic Park, between Montgomery and Wetumpka, and the role the area played in the Revolutionary War and the Indian Wars.
There is history galore, Felder says, but he also maintains that there is something on the Alabama Scenic River Trail for everyone, from the sophisticated naturalist, to the neophyte.
“There are places along the trail that are unparalleled in their beauty,” he said.
He also speaks mainly of the area in the Black Belt, near places such as Gees Bend in Wilcox County.
“Around those places,” he said, “you are in a very lonely, lonely place. The banks haven’t changed for centuries. It is in places like that where you feel really connected to nature. Few people know about it.”
