The Ridge Interpretive Center is physically located on Macon County Road 10 in the Warrior Stand Community about twelve miles south of Tuskegee and nine miles north of Hurtsboro. Visit our Contact Us page for a map and directions.
Mailing address: 10735 County Road 10
Union Springs, AL 36089
Email: contact@digtheridge.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheRidgeMaconCountyArchaeologyProject
The Ridge Project pays homage to a cluster of historic rural communities located along a ridge line in southeast Macon County, Alabama where Native Americans created a trading path long ago. The path became a segment of The Federal Road, the main route for pioneer emigration to the Old Southwest during the great "Alabama Fever" land rush.
To provide classroom resources and educational programs and events about our region's historical and cultural significance for the benefit of students, teachers, the local community, and visitors of all ages.
The Ridge Macon County Archaeology Project derives its name from the topography found in southeastern Macon County, Alabama that divides the drainage basins of the Chattahoochee and Tallapoosa Rivers.
The Ridge communities bustled with Native American activity from pre-historic times: pioneer activity from 1817-1836, and antebellum activity from 1836-1865. From the Civil War throughout Reconstruction, and from the rise of Tuskegee Institute’s outreach beginning in the 1880s to the mid-1950s, The Ridge and adjacent communities experienced major shifts in population, agriculture, the economy, and in the centers of power in government and education. Today southeast Macon County spans a rural historic landscape with a legacy that is reflected in the residents who are a community of descendants of the original free and enslaved Alabama Fever settlers.
"The chances are good that all who trace their ancestry to anywhere in Alabama south of the Tennessee Valley have a forebear who came over the Federal Road. During its period of maximum use, when "Alabama Fever" was epidemic in the Carolinas and Georgia, the population of the territory (later the state) increased by over half a million."
Southerland & Brown, The Federal Road through Georgia, the Creek Nation, and Alabama, 1806-1836, 1989, University of Alabama Press.
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