Travel: Alabama’s Hallelujah Trail of Historic Churches

In many towns across the South, the church steeples create the skyline. For more than 200 years, Southern houses of worship have been the place for commemorating the milestones of a life—birth, marriage, death. And many of those churches have interesting stories to tell. Hit the North Alabama Hallelujah Trail to visit 32 historic churches across Alabama’s mountain-lakes region, and experience the artistry, architecture, and soul of a culturally rich area where many of today’s worshipers warm the same pews as many generations before them.

A self-guided driving tour, the North Alabama Hallelujah Trail includes churches scattered across 16 counties. Each is more than a hundred years old, on its original site, and still holding services regularly.

“Traveling in Europe brought about the idea for the Hallelujah Trail,” says Dana Lee Jennings, president and chief executive of the Alabama Mountain Lakes Association, which created the trail. “European churches are centuries old, but American architects and ingenuity have created a plethora of church designs, and examples can be found on the Hallelujah Trail. A church provides a peaceful setting, whether a grand gothic structure or a simple clapboard building. With lives so fast-paced, being in a church allows us to just be still, to take a deep breath and enjoy the surroundings.”

Winding across the northernmost part of the state, the Hallelujah Trail will take you to elegant Gothic Revival buildings and hand-hewn log structures. You’ll hear stories of Cherokee Native Americans who organized their own Methodist congregation and of parishioners who heard the cannons of the Civil War’s Battle of Shiloh while at church more than 60 miles away. You’ll visit thriving cities, charming towns, and tiny dots on the map. Along with rich history and arresting architecture, the Hallelujah Trail offers glimpses into the spirit of the Deep South and its people. Here are a few highlights.

First Presbyterian Church, Tuscumbia. One Sunday morning during the Civil War when the Union Army was occupying Florence, Alabama, several Union soldiers attended a service at the local Presbyterian church. The pastor offered a prayer for Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the Confederate soldiers. The federal officers in attendance got up, pulled the minister from the pulpit, arrested him, and sent him to a prison camp in the Midwest, where he spent several months, forcing the congregation to take a hiatus from Sunday services.

Soon after, federal officers visited First Presbyterian in Tuscumbia, just across the river from Florence. “Pastor Sawtelle had heard about what had happened in Florence and made a point not to make the same mistake,” says Ron Hudson, a current member and unofficial historian of First Presbyterian. “That’s probably why we have the oldest continually used church structure in the state. There are buildings that are older, but a lot of churches that predate the Civil War have gaps during the war when they weren’t able to meet. We have held services consistently since the church was built in 1827.”

In addition to being the state’s oldest house of continuous worship, First Presbyterian’s Georgian Gothic building has been the spiritual home of a number of prominent Alabama families. Among them, the family of Tuscumbia native Helen Keller were longtime members, and she was baptized there as an infant. Primarily built by slave labor with bricks made on site from local materials, First Presbyterian still includes its original slave gallery, which is now used for balcony seating and choir performances.

Helton Memorial Chapel, Stevenson. The widow of a country doctor created this memorial to her husband in 1900, and it became the lifeblood of the community and still draws weekly visitors more than a century later. Mrs. Emma Helton spent $1,040 erecting what was the area’s first church and named it in honor of her late husband. It took in about 500 people on the day of its dedication; today it has about 90 on its roll.

Now a Baptist congregation, the Helton Memorial building was originally constructed “for all denominations, because it was the only church around the community,” says Jean Payne, church clerk. Visiting there, you’ll enjoy hearing stories about the early members of the church, and you’ll see the original stained glass windows and chimney, which was used for coal heating.

The Tabernacle, Hartselle. Nothing more than cedar logs holding up a roof to cover hand-hewn benches, the Tabernacle is open on three sides and has served for more than a century as the site of the Hartselle Camp Meeting, which began as a ten-day revival in the late 1800s. The cedar posts that were first erected in 1897 still support the building, which the state of Alabama has declared a historic landmark.

In the early days of the camp meeting, families rode onto the campground in wagons pulled by mules and cooked their meals around a campfire. Today, the site includes modern lodging and meeting facilities and draws families from across the region for a weeklong, interdenominational Christian revival each summer.

“The camp meeting has been known for its great food, warm fellowship, and dynamic preaching,” says Rob Cain, president of the Hartselle Camp Meeting. “Hundreds of people have been saved around the wooden altar on the old sawdust trail, and countless people have entered the ministry or mission field from there.”

The Hallelujah Trail was made possible by grants from the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Alabama Bureau of Tourism and Travel, and the Alabama Mountain Lakes Association. For more information about the trail, or to request a brochure, visit www.AlabamaMountainLakes.org.