Reform, AL

Reform is a Pickens County town on U.S. 82 and Alabama 17, roughly halfway between Columbus, Mississippi, and Tuscaloosa. The 2010 census counted 1,702 residents. U.S. 82 runs southeast toward Gordo and Tuscaloosa and northwest toward Mississippi, so the highway is the town's clearest regional connection. Reform Elementary School and Pickens County High School serve the town and surrounding communities, while city hall and municipal services keep a separate civic center on the Alabama side of the state line. City hall remains the town's administrative center.

Reform was incorporated in 1898, the same year the first railroad reached town. The city grew around timber, corn, and cotton, with 54 train whistles reported in or near town each day in 1912. Those industries have changed, but the rail-and-highway history still gives Reform its shape: a county town with school, city, and commercial functions arranged along transportation routes. The unusual name comes from a nineteenth-century revival story tied to Methodist missionary Lorenzo "Crazy" Dow.