Alabama – RDZ Photography

Virtual Travel – Alabama

Architecture, Art, History, Nature, Transportation

I was born with ‘that travelling bone’, and since I was very small I wanted to see every place in the world. Since my family rarely went very far from home, I did most of my travel via maps and charts. Since that time I have always enjoyed maps and charts, eventually amassing a fairly large collection.

Now that we are all hanging around our respective homes it seems like a good time to check out the maps, and do some virtual travelling.

Each state in the U.S. has a Department of Transportation, who has traditionally published a new road map every year or two. While this is waning, the maps that they created often were works of art – promoting tourism and commerce in their state.

This posting series will features those maps, one posting for each state, along with some highlights of my photographs of travels to those states. Since there is no good way to prioritize them, we will go alphabetically starting with… Alabama.

The oldest map from Alabama in my collection is from 1946. The cover of this map features the State Capitol. Dating from 1850 this building has some infamous history – serving as the location for the swearing in of Jefferson Davis when the southern states seceded from the union in 1861.

The rear cover is more innocuous – an unnamed waterfalls.

The map itself is reflective of the times; a network of national and state highways. The interstates system was still 12 years from starting, so if you were making a trip through Alabama (or any state) it was a slow trip punctuated by numerous little towns.

Contrasting that with the newest Alabama map in my collection from 2018. Between the interstates, and numerous 4 lane roads and bypasses, the trips are much faster.

A look at the Alabama State Highway Maps over the years.

We jump ahead almost three decades to 1974. In an unusual move the cover is actually just part of the overall backside of the road map, so the state name is truncated. The family’s outfits however make this map classic – nothing like plaid to say ‘1974’.

The late 1970s were fairly boring for the artwork. The state seal was on the 1977-1978 map, and just photo and text graced the 1979-1980 map. This map is the only one I have out of thousands that has just text for the cover. The rear is even more plain – HELP written across it in 40 point font.

By the 1980s the State Capitol has made a return to the map.

Alabama is unusual in that most of the maps issued covered two years. The one below for 1985-1986 features the State of Alabama Highway Department building in Montgomery. It is also unusual in that the maps orientation is horizontal, a theme they continue on the next map as well.

The Mobile Bay I-10 Bridge is featured on the 1993-1994 map.

The following year the map returns to the traditional vertical orientation. It also features a new governor (Fob James) and transportation director. The 1995-1996 map (left) features Lookout Mountain Parkway in DeSoto State Park near Fort Payne. The next map in the series from 1997-1998 (right) has the U.S. 431 Bridge over Guntersville Lake on the cover.

Another governor, another style. Governor Don Siegelman was elected in 1999 and served one term. The first map we have from his administration is also from 1999 and features two happy couples hanging out on the beach of the Gulf of Mexico. The second, and last in my collection from this era features a golf course.

Alabama has for many years done heavy advertising for their ‘Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail’. Jones was famous for his golf course designs, having completed over 500 in his lifetime. The ‘Golf Trail’ in Alabama covers 468 holes at 11 locations, with the theory being you spent however much time you need golfing them all to come up with a cumulative score.

The next administration of Bob Riley covers 4 maps in the collection. All features happy people in happy places starting with Cheaha State Park on the 2003 map. This park contains the highest point in Alabama, the 2413 foot high Cheaha Mountain.

In 2004 the Alabama Renaissance Festival was featured. This festival takes place each year in Florence, Alabama.

In 2005 they went back to the biennial approach, with the map covering 2005-2006. This map continues the happy people approach with the family at Orange Beach in Gulf Shores. The 2007-2008 featured a non identified park full of wildflowers with a couple of bicycle riders.

We jump ahead a few years to the 2011-2012 map. This map ironically is back at Orange Beach on the Gulf Coast. The following map for 2013-2014 features a place called Gorham’s Bluff. Located on top of Sand Mountain in far northeast Alabama, it is the southern tip of the Appalachian Mountains. Both maps feature the ‘dual Adirondack Chairs’ look that is most famous throughout Canada.

This map is also the first to use ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, from the famous Lynyrd Skynyrd song of the same name.

The last two Alabama State Highway maps in my collection feature yet another Gulf Coast park for the 2015-2016 edition. The newest (for now) returns to the historic buildings, this time with the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham. This church was home to Dr Rev Martin Luther King from 1954-1960.

I have only been in Alabama a few times, but the most recent one was easily the best. During the summer 2019 road trip we passed through Huntsville and Birmingham.

Highlights of this trip include Cathedral Caverns….

The U.S. Space and Rocket Center and NASA Marshall Flight Center in Huntsville….

And my favorite, the Barber Motorsports Museum near Birmingham.

Alabama – our first virtual visit.

Across America – May 2019 – Random Scenes Part 2

Architecture, Art, History, Nature, Transportation, Water Features

Central Tennessee – Bus Graveyard

Northern Alabama – Rock Zoo

Scottsboro, Alabama – Did you ever lose your luggage on an airplane and never get it back. It likely ended up here, as they buy all of the unclaimed luggage from the airlines and sell it in essentially a thrift store.

Pawhuska, Oklahoma

Bartlesville, Oklahoma – Phillips 66 Petroleum Company Headquarters

Vinita, Oklahoma – Will Rogers Rodeo

Eastern Oklahoma – Pensacola Dam. A mile long and releasing a lot of water because of the recent rains.

Joplin, Missouri – America’s 2nd largest truck stop.

Southern Missouri – Presumed dead armadillo

Somewhere else in Southern Missouri – Coke Machine Graveyard

Scenes around Cairo, Illinois – At the confluence of the Ohio River and Mississippi River – with flooding.

Evansville, Indiana – Restored Greyhound Bus Station, now a hipster hamburger place. Manhattan prices in small town Indiana.

The interior looked nothing like a bus station.

Evansville, Indiana – County Courthouse

Scenes around Louisville, Kentucky

And after 3 weeks of running around the country – back in Ohio (in Cincinnati). Only 2 hours to home.

Vance, Alabama – May 2019 – Benz in ‘Bama

History, Transportation

As you are driving down the interstate in rural Alabama one of the most unlikely road names you expect to see is Mercedes Drive!

That is until you exit and find car carriers leaving with new Mercedes Benz SUVs.

Over the last 25 years most non domestic car makers have built factories in the U.S., and Mercedes is no different. Their facility here is first class – an almost 4 million square feet manufacturing plant…

A state of the art training facility…

And a beautiful visitor center.

Normally you can go to the visitor center and take tours of the factory but they are retooling and the tours are shut down.

The visitor center however remains open with their museum to tour.

It features some recent models from AMG.

Lewis Hamilton’s Petronas F1 car.

The display included a concept car.

The museum portion have some very early examples of Mercedes.

The classic 1970s MB look.

The pre war years were very stylish.

It was disappointing that the factory tours are unavailable, but the small museum was worth the stop.

Leeds, Alabama – May 2019 – Barber Motorsport Museum

Architecture, Art, History, Sports, Transportation

The Barber Motorsports Museum is located in suburban Birmingham in the town of Leeds. It is hands down one of the very best Motorsports museums in the world.

With over 1600 motorcycles from over 200 manufacturers it is the preeminent collection. Over 900 are displayed in the 200,000+ square foot museum, along with 100 cars. Oh yeah, a world class road course race track is on the grounds as well that Porsche uses for their racing school.

Please note with that many options for photos this posting is quite long, with over 40 photos. But words don’t do the venue justice so the photos will speak for themselves.

Birmingham, Alabama – May 2019 – Rickwood Field

Architecture, History, Sports

Despite what Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, or even Bosse Field in Evansville, Indiana say, Rickwood Field in Birmingham is America’s oldest baseball stadium.

Opened in 1910 it is in amazingly similar look and condition to the day it was opened.

While it is no longer used regularly for the minor league Birmingham Barons, it still sees some use with a tribute game by the Barons, as well as other use.

Most frequently it is used as a movie set for retro baseball movies, as well as local colleges.

As you enter the stadium you are greeted with old entry gates, not metal detectors.

The lineups are written on a chalkboard.

Going into the box seats you have a fence surrounding the home plate area for protection from foul balls.

The seats are still all wood, not plastic.

For most a large roof protects you from the hot Alabama summer sun.

Looking down the stands towards the press box. The original press box was a tiny 4 person booth on the roof, but this one was added for a period piece movie and it was left as it is more functional.

We were permitted to go onto the perfectly manicured field to check it out. The center field fence seems far away from here.

Also note how much foul ground there is behind home plate – many would be foul balls likely turn into outs here.

Looking down first base toward right field show the unusual cantilevered light towers.

Left field is similar, with a ‘batting barn’ built further off to the left.

A view from home plate back towards the stands again show the foul territory.

Despite it’s minimal use, they keep the field in perfect condition.

The view of the right field stands are far longer than those along left field. When this stadium was built in 1910 Forbes Field in Pittsburgh had just been completed as the standard in stadium design, and the architects here used essentially the same design – albeit with much less seating than the major league stadium.

As we make our way into the outfield you can see the advertising along the outfield fence. This was a common practice in the early 1900s, and the advertising that is there is either period advertising, or new companies with the ads made to look period correct.

The scoreboard has been restored to the early 1900s look, with the scorekeeping done manually.

The teams listed would be those from the 1930s – Atlanta is still in the Southern League, and Brooklyn still has the Dodgers.

Birmingham is happy to see you.

Even the Vulcan is present.

The ads are very cool.

Another sign of the history of the south – there were all white teams, and all black teams. Rickwood Field hosted both Birmingham teams.

This practice ended in the 1950s.

The right field stands.

Rickwood Field is easily one of the best baseball ‘park’s I have ever seen. While it has been made retro for Hollywood , it really works nicely.

Birmingham, Alabama – May 2019 – Early Morning Visit to the Botanical Gardens

Art, Nature

The Birmingham Botanical Gardens is located at the base of a large hill in the southern part of the city. Since it’s opening to this day there is no admission charge to the gardens, it is there for the pleasure of the residents (and visitors).

There are a few sculptures throughout the gardens.

By mid May the flowers in Alabama are in full bloom.

There are 30 different gardens on the 67 acres. The most interesting was the Asian gardens.

The Birmingham Botanical Gardens is a nice place to spend a couple of hours in the cool of a May Alabama morning.

Birmingham, Alabama – May 2019 – Views of the City

Architecture, Art, History, Sports

Some random views of Birmingham, Alabama. The city is known as the Magic City because of the fast growth in the late 1800s during the rapid expansion of the steel industry.

There are a number of classic old buildings downtown.

With the industry gone, today Birmingham depends on education (UAB) for much of it’s employment.

Eddie Kendricks grew up in Birmingham before moving to Detroit and starting the Temptations.

The Vulcan Statue is the symbol of Birmingham, reflecting the steel industry roots. It stands on a 180′ pedestal high on a hill overlooking the city.

The statue itself was made for the 1904 World’s Fair in St Louis where it was awarded the Grand Prize.

Today you can walk up the many stairs or take the elevator to the top for great views.

We took the elevator!

For a medium sized city Birmingham has a nice skyline.

With sunset, the lights came on around town.

The skyline lit up nicely from atop the Vulcan Park tower.

Birmingham, Alabama – May 2019 – Civic Culture

Uncategorized

For more than 100 years Birmingham was the center of manufacturing for the southern United States. It was often referred to as Pittsburgh of the South in reference to all of the steel mills. As with Pittsburgh, the industry has for the most part left town.

As with the northern industrial cities there was significant investment in civic culture, and in Birmingham there is none better than the main library.

While the primary entrance is a modern building, across the street is the Linn-Henley Research Library. Built in 1927 it reflects the art deco style of the period.

The building is most known for the Ezra Winter murals. Most depict historic events such as below left – Dante and Virgil. On the right is Don Quixote.

In addition to the murals, the main reading room has a fantastic ceiling.

The west side of the room shows the interesting mix of the murals with the art deco balcony railings.

Ezra Winter was raised in Michigan, but spent his early adult years in Europe where he was classically trained in painting. Interestingly they were completed in New York City and applied to the Birmingham Library walls with white lead.

The Children’s Library has a mural depicting fairy tales.

A seemingly out of place modern art piece is also present.

The library, county courthouse and city hall all frame a public park. As they were all built about the same time all reflect the art deco style.

The courthouse was designed by the famed Chicago firm of Holabird & Root.

Reliefs high up on the building reflect local history.

Outside is the Statue of Liberty – well a small replica of the Statue of Liberty.

Murals depicting the history of the region are in the lobby of the courthouse. This mural, entitled Old South, has caused great controversy as it depicts slaves picking cotton. A multi racial committee of 16 reached a consensus that they would create a retractable cover that would obscure them except during educational tours.

They apparently haven’t yet decided to cover up their history as it was available for us to see.

The accompanying mural entitled ‘New South’ depicts the industrial work. As previously noted, the industry is gone, so I suppose they will have to come up with a ‘New New South’, depicting Birmingham’s current major employers including Education, Finance and Engineering firms.

As part of the agreement on the Old South mural, a new mural entitled Justice Is Blind was added with a modern collection of symbols that show, among others, a black lady justice along with a white lady justice.

Less controversial is the scales of justice relief as well as the art deco clock.

The final building in the area is Birmingham City Hall.

City Hall has a gallery of noteworthy city residents over the years.

While not a Birmingham resident, Martin Luther King was instrumental in bringing social justice to the city, and is honored with a portrait in the gallery.

Birmingham turned out to be far nicer than I was expecting. It is a city that is recognizing it’s past (good and bad), and moving forward into the future.

Huntsville, Alabama – May 2019 – Marshall Space Flight Center

History, Nature, Sciences, Transportation

The George C Marshall Space Flight Center is NASA’s largest complex, where rocketry and propulsion are researched and developed.

Tours are available with proper ID as it is located on Redstone Arsenal. The tour departs from the U.S. Space and Rocket Center Museum via a NASA bus.

The administration building is where Werner Von Braun and others made space travel possible.

Most manufacturing companies have displays of their products at their corporate headquarters and NASA is no different, only theirs are far more interesting than others.

A display of 3 of the engines greet visitors to the building.

While most people think ‘Houston’ when it comes to NASA Mission Control in reality there are three – Houston, Kennedy Space Center in Florida for ‘Launch Control’, and Huntsville for ‘Payload Control’.

Within this building are the staff that manages the day to day workings on the International Space Station.

The lobby of the building have models of the ISS and an astronaut at work.

A commonly used expression throughout NASA are ‘racks’. Each rack of equipment has specific roles, and teams of engineers are responsible for their rack.

The Payload Operations Center was amazingly small given the critical nature of their work. Just a handful of people are monitoring and managing the effort.

The structures that support the testing of rockets during development are known as ‘stands’. This is likely the most famous stand in the history of rocket development – The Redstone Interim Test Stand.

It was built in 1953 for just $25,000 out of materials scavenged from around the arsenal. They had to do it this way because the government wouldn’t give them any more money than that.

A total of 362 static rocket tests were completed here. Their budget was so low they took railroad tank cars that had been used to transport chemicals – cleaned them and buried them 300′ away from the test stand for their bunker to monitor the tests from.

Nearby you could see some of the much larger, much more expensive newer test stands.

One of the biggest challenges in long duration space flight is water. Because humans need water to survive, they had to come up with a way to conserve water in many ways one would not expect.

They have developed systems to recycle urine and washing water onboard that result in potable water.

The system is held in these three racks. The rotating distillation unit separate liquid from gases, then is sent to another unit for solid removals before the liquid go through a number of filtration’s that remove micro organisms.

They continue to research and develop even more efficient units, and the men’s room has a special urinal that they collect samples from for further testing – so I contributed to science.

As we rode around the complex we passed a number of interesting structures including this small, but very long wind tunnel.

Our final stop was the rocket park where they have examples of the various rockets used in space travel over the years.

While the museum portion was interesting, the additional tour of the Marshall Space Flight Center was by far the best part of the day.

Huntsville, Alabama – May 2019 – U.S. Space and Rocket Center

History, Sciences, Transportation

The city of Huntsville, Alabama is located in the northern Alabama hills. For many years it was a cotton producing town like many others nearby. All that changed in the 1940s when the military started using a nearby arsenal for rocket development.

After the war many German engineers were relocated here and together with American engineers began developing rockets. The most famous of these engineers was Werner von Braun. This effort has lead to Huntsville’s nickname – The Rocket City.

Fortunately not all of the efforts in rocket development was for the military. This technology has allowed man to explore space.

As you approach the museum you can’t help but notice the massive Saturn V rocket.

Inside the museum there is a plethora of space related artifacts including Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s space suit.

The museum showcases the development of the equipment used in space flight including these early prototypes for gloves and boots.

One of the few items you can touch, a replica of the Apollo Lunar Rover is on display for inspection. The seats felt like cheap lawn chairs but served their purpose for the astronauts in their bulky space suits.

Apollo 13’s challenges have been made famous by Hollywood, but Huntsville has a couple of the components from the real space craft.

The museum has a couple of the early EVA (Extravehicular Activity) units.

Another large display has mock ups of the International Space Station.

When the space shuttle program was decommissioned there was a fierce competition amongst museums for the remaining shuttles. Huntsville did not get one of the four that actually flew in space, but they did get Pathfinder’.

This full scale simulator was built here in Huntsville and was used in the development of the facilities required for shuttle launches.

While the shuttle itself is a mock up, the fuel tanks and boosters are very much real.

A closer view of the Saturn V shows it’s massive size, with a height of 363′.

This mock up of the lunar lander on the moon’s surface is located outside near a couple of amusement rides. The rides are there to entertain the thousands of tweens and teens who come every year for Space Camp.

The outdoor exhibits are showing the wear of being in northern Alabama weather for the last 30-40 years.

The second major building on the campus is the Davidson Center for Space Exploration. It was designed to house a horizontal Saturn V rocket, as well as numerous other larger items, including other engines.

Skylab was the first space station used, having been launched in the 1970s. After just 6 years it was discontinued and eventually fell back to earth. While most of it was destroyed during re-entry, this large piece was recovered in the desert in Western Australia.

The Davidson Center has more examples of space suits.

Their prized possession is the Apollo 16 command module. This view shows the damage from re-entry that the space capsules incur.

The NASA program has had 3 major accidents with loss of life. The first of these was during the development of Apollo 1. A cabin fire during launch rehearsal killed the three astronauts, Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee.

A memorial and tribute is on display in the Davidson Center to the three.

Outside the Davidson Center are large concrete pieces that commemorate each of the Apollo flights.

In addition the wall that surrounds the courtyard have plaques describing each of the flights.

The U.S. Space and Rocket Center has a great collection of space related items. While it is very busy with ‘Space Campers’, it is a must see for any space travel or history fan.