Walnut Grove, AL

Walnut Grove is an Etowah County town in western Alabama, along U.S. 278 between Gadsden and Cullman and just north of Altoona. The settlement began in the early 1810s as Thomas Cross Roads, became Cornelius in 1848, and took the Walnut Grove name in 1849. Its most unusual early institution was Walnut Grove College, opened in 1884 as the first college-preparatory school for males and females in northeast Alabama. The college operated for fifteen years and helped the town grow to thirteen stores, including a drugstore with a soda fountain.

The town’s later history reached into industrial work at Silver Gap on Red Mountain, where a high grade of magnesium was discovered in 1917 and mined and refined during the 1930s and 1940s. Today Walnut Grove remains part of the Gadsden metropolitan area, with U.S. 278 connecting it east to the county seat and west toward Blount County. The old college story, the magnesium workings, and the highway between Etowah County and north-central Alabama give the town a more layered history than its size suggests.