Langston, AL

Langston is a Jackson County town on the eastern shore of the Tennessee River, where the 2020 census counted 265 residents. The town sits at river mile 377, on the Guntersville Lake section of the river, with Sand Mountain rising immediately to the east. Langston began as Coffeetown in the 1810s, when the Coffee brothers were among the first settlers; a post office opened in 1845 with Langston Coffee as its first postmaster.

ATTRBrian Stansberry / CC BY 4.0

River traffic helped Langston grow into a port with nine stores and a blacksmith shop. The late-nineteenth-century rise of railroads and the early automobile era shifted that pattern, and the Guntersville Dam project in the late 1930s flooded part of the town. Today, the Captain Jackson-Bottomlee House is listed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage. Buck's Pocket State Park lies less than two miles away, while Lake Guntersville State Park is about five miles away. Langston's map joins a river port, a mountain wall, and a large reservoir.