|| Home || Photography! || Maps || Forum || Donate! || ...back to WeatherManSam.com ||

Contact Info.

E-mail:
weather_sam at yahoo.com

Messenger:
AIM: weathermansam

|| Sign Guestbook ||
|| View Guestbook ||


“I embrace emerging experience.
I participate in discovery.
I am a butterfly.
I am not a butterfly collector.
I want the experience of the butterfly.”

~William Stafford
Chief Ladiga Trail Resource
Me at southern terminus, Dr. Mike Tucker Park, Anniston, AL


A Little History...

from JSU's EPIC The Chief Ladiga Trail is Alabama’s first extended rails-to-trails project. It wanders 33 miles through the countryside of Calhoun and Cleburne counties and it connects the municipalities of Piedmont, Jacksonville, Weaver and Anniston. Seen along the way are beautiful wetlands, streams, forest, farmland, and a horizon filled with mountains. The Chief Ladiga Trail is a family oriented pathway that provides a safe, non-motorized way to travel, exercise and relax while enjoying the outdoors. Projects like this tend to increase tourism, benefit businesses, decrease crime and generally increase the quality of life. We hope that you will enjoy and support the Chief Ladiga Trail for many years to come.

The Chief Ladiga Trail was named for a Creek Indian leader who signed the Cusseta Treaty in 1832. Under the terms of that agreement, the Creeks gave up claim to their remaining lands in northeast Alabama. Because Cheif Ladiga had signed the treaty, he was allowed to select some land in Benton County, Alabama for his wife and himself. (Parts of Benton County later became Cleburne and Calhoun Counties.) A year after the treaty, Ladiga sold part of his holdings for $2,000 to a group of speculators headed by Charles White Peters. That land later became Jacksonville. Jacksonville, first called Drayton, was established in the early 1800s on the site of Chief Ladiga's trading post. In 1834 the town was renamed in honor of Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States. After selling the land, Ladiga and his wife moved to the Cherokee Nation and settled near what is now Piedmont.