Gavin Chambers, Fall 2024
Big Spring is a natural spring located in the center of Huntsville. It was an essential point for almost every development phase in early Madison County. It played a crucial role in the layout that Huntsville would become today, such as the location of the city itself, the direction of its streets, and the installation of one of the first public waterworks in the United States. The spring has been in constant use since it had its first settler in 1805. At that early date, the basis for Huntsville’s water system was realized, with water that was said to be of such quality and goodness, that better drinking water can hardly be found anywhere.
The Big Spring was known by this same name to the Cherokee and Chickasaw Indians of the region. The spring not only furnished life-sustaining water for the Indians but also watered the teeming wildlife area toward the Tennessee River. The two Indian tribes thus declared the tract a joint hunting ground for deer, bear, ducks, wild turkeys, and fish.
In searching for a big spring, John Hunt, one of the founders of Huntsville, came to North Alabama from Tennessee. In the fall of 1804, Hunt and David Bean, came to the Great Bend area of the Tennessee River to locate a large spring for a settlement nearby. While on their journey, they spent a night at the Joseph Criner cabin on the Flint River. Criner likely gave them directions to the Huntsville Big Spring. After finding the Big Spring and constructing a cabin near its banks, the two men returned to their homes. In the spring of 1805, John Hunt brought his family from East Tennessee to their new home. Those who soon followed Hunt also settled around the spring and formed the squatter community of Hunt’s Spring and later Huntsville.
Before the United States government land sales for the North Alabama region in 1809, John Hunt made an application to purchase two hundred acres In the immediate area of Huntsville. He failed, however, to pay the necessary cash required to hold the land, which included the Big Spring. Due to poor financial management, Hunt was unable to make the payments, and the land was reverted to the United States Government. The first person to actually purchase the Big Spring was Martin Beaty of Lee County, Virginia. On July 11, 1808, Beaty paid one thousand dollars for a square of a thousand acres. Years later and after much confusion over land titles, Beaty reached a compromise with the United States Government and relinquished his claim to the land and the Big Spring.
While the town site was being surveyed, the streets were plotted to run in a rather peculiar direction. Instead of following a true north, south, east, and west direction, they were set thirty-four degrees north of west from the true meridian. This unusual arrangement was chosen so the spring and the bluff would be left in a square without crowding the adjoining building lots. Jefferson Street was the first street to run parallel to the line of the bluff, with all the others conforming to it.
Water transportation improvements for Huntsville centered around the Big Spring. From an early date, the abundance of water in the semicircle pond at the headwaters of the spring and the stream or branch from the spring encouraged dreams of a canal to the Tennessee River. The realization of the dream began when the Indian Creek Navigation Company was chartered in 1820, under the direction of LeRoy Pope, Thomas Fearn, Stephen S. Ewing, Henry Cook, and Samuel Hazard. The drive for canal construction, led by Doctor Thomas Fearn, president of the company, generally met with an enthusiastic response from the Huntsville citizens. The knowledge that the proposed canal could furnish an easy method for shipping cotton by keelboats prompted the immediate start of construction. The completion of the canal would also provide an all-water route from Huntsville to New Orleans, the leading cotton port of the South.
Bibliography
Big Spring. (1910). Published by Post Card Exchange, Birmingham, Ala.
Big Spring. (2024). Gavin Chambers
Bounds, Sara Etheline (1976) "The Big Spring of Huntsville," Huntsville Historical Review: Vol. 6: No. 1, Article 3.
Harbarger, Harvilee Phillips (2000) "The "Big Spring" In Huntsville's History," Huntsville Historical Review: Vol. 27: No. 2, Article 8.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the UAH Honors College and UAH Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives.
