Section, AL

Section is a Jackson County town on the western edge of Sand Mountain in northeastern Alabama. The 2020 census counted 756 residents. State Route 35 runs through town between Rainsville and Scottsboro, while State Route 71 heads northeast and county roads fill out the ridge-top grid. Section High School serves kindergarten through twelfth grade as part of the Jackson County school system. Weathington Park sits at the northeast edge, with views toward Lake Guntersville and the Tennessee River valley.

ATTRPatrick.E.Patterson / CC BY-SA 4.0

Section began as Mount Zion, the name used when its first post office opened in 1875. Settlers had been coming for free land since 1862, and the town later took its lasting name from the “16th Section,” a square-mile parcel reserved to support public schools. The first store opened in 1889; a shirt factory operated from 1965 to 1975. The name is a land-survey term, but the present-day map is easy to read: school, highway, ridge-top farms, and a park looking west across the valley.