Black Warrior River - History

History

Variant names of the river used over time include Apotaka Hacha River, Bance River, Chocta River, Pafallaya River, Patagahatche River, Tascaloosa River, Tuskaloosa River, and Warrior River.

Historically, the river was called the Warrior River above Tuscaloosa and the Black Warrior River below Tuscaloosa. Though unofficial, this naming convention is still often used by the public and occasionally by government agencies. However, the official name of the entire river from Bankhead Lake south is the Black Warrior River.

To develop the coal industries of central Alabama, the US federal government in the 1880s began building a system of dressed rock lock and dams that concluded in 17 impoundments. The first 16 locks and dams were constructed of sandstone quarried from the banks of the river and the river bed itself. Huge blocks of stone were hand shaped with hammer and chisel to construct the locks and dams, and a few of these dams were in service until the 1960s. One example of the craftsmanship of the stone locks is at University Park on Jack Warner Parkway in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The bank side wall of Lock 3 (Later renumbered Lock 12 and today largely disassembled) is the last remnant of the old dams made of this dressed rock from the 1880s-90s. A concrete dam completed in 1915, Lock 17 (John H. Bankhead Lock and Dam) is the last and only existing of the original dams, and has been modernized over the years with the addition of spillway gates, and replacement of the two stage lift with a larger single lift lock. Lock 17 and Holt Lock and Dam also have hydroelectric power plants owned by the Alabama Power Company suppling electricity for west-central Alabama areas.

This lock and dam system made the Black Warrior River navigable along its entire course and it is one of the longest channelized waterways in the United States forming part of the extended system that link the Gulf of Mexico to Birmingham. Birmingham became the "Pittsburgh of the South", shipping iron and steel products via the Black Warrior River through the Panama Canal to the West Coast of the United States and the world. High-grade coal is barged to Mobile and is then shipped throughout the world today making Mobile the largest coal port in the Southeastern States. Coal mining and production in west-central Alabama is one of the larger employers and is likely to continue being important to the energy needs of the world for the foreseeable future.

Today, a severe threat to the Black Warrior River is sedimentation, or siltation, the primary cause of which are development projects, logging and mining operations, and the building and maintaining of roads.