Historic Walker County

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Huntsville Item.
COURTESY OF THE HUNTSVILLE ITEM.
mouth of Caroline Creek on the western bank of
the Trinity River. Founded in the early 1830s,
this settlement in northeastern Walker County
offered numerous iron and sulfur springs and
served as a rest stop for steamboats on the Trinity
River. Despite its advantageous location and
beneficent springs, however, Carolina never had
a population of more than three dozen people. 13
Another Trinity River settlement, Wyser’s
Bluff, grew up in 1853, as people fled a yellow
fever epidemic in the neighboring town of
Cincinnati. Named initially for landowner
Gustavus A. Wyser, this settlement was later
renamed Osceola for John C. Calhoun’s
plantation in South Carolina, before residents
finally decided on Tuscaloosa in honor of the
Alabama town from which many of the migrants
had come. Located twelve miles north of
Huntsville, Tuscaloosa had a natural landing for
steamboats and served as a commercial center
for local farmers throughout the 1850s. 14
Much the same can be said about Joseph
Werner’s settlement of Newport. Established in
1854, this Trinity River port enjoyed a brief
heyday in the years before the Civil War as
cotton farmers shipped their produce downriver
to Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico. 15
1 0 ✦ H I S T O R I C W A L K E R C O U N T Y