Cherokee, AL

Cherokee is a Colbert County town near the Tennessee River in northwest Alabama, part of the Florence–Muscle Shoals area known locally as the Shoals. The 2020 census counted 970 residents. Cherokee began as a Memphis and Charleston Railroad stop in the late 1850s or early 1860s and incorporated on December 7, 1871, making it the second-oldest incorporated municipality in Colbert County. Before Pickwick Dam changed the river, Cherokee marked the beginning of the shoals that made travel difficult.

ATTRBrian Stansberry / CC BY 4.0

The water still gives the town its shape. Riverton, once a separate river community, is now part of Cherokee, and the Riverton Rose Trail follows Bear Creek toward the Tennessee. The eight-mile Cherokee Kayak Trail opened in 2018, giving paddlers a route past sandbars and wooded banks. Cherokee Elementary and Cherokee High School serve western Colbert County, while the Barton Riverfront Industrial Park brings manufacturing east of town. The Key Underwood Coon Dog Memorial Graveyard adds one of the area’s most unusual landmarks. Cherokee is a railroad town, river town, and outdoor town at once, with old transportation problems turned into a modern map of trails, schools, and water.