Transcript:
Voice-over: [00:00:01] You're listening to the Unexpected Adventures in North Alabama podcast, part of the Destination Marketing Podcast Network.
Melea Hames: [00:00:16] Welcome to the Unexpected Adventures in North Alabama Podcast. This episode is all about April Walking Tours and we have incredible guests to help us learn all about this amazing event. We're excited to have Beth Ridgeway and Katie Stamps join us this week. Welcome to the podcast girls!
Beth Ridgeway: [00:00:31] Hey there! Yay!
Katie Stamps: [00:00:33] Thanks for having me.
Melea Hames: [00:00:34] Yeah, it's going to be fun. It's such a treat to have you join me today. I'm so excited about this episode and to learn more about April Walking Tours. But before we get started, would you mind sharing a bit about yourself and how you're involved with the walking tours? Beth let's start with you and then Katie.
Beth Ridgeway: [00:00:49] Alright, so I am Beth Ridgeway, I am with the CVB here in Huntsville, that is the Convention and Visitors Bureau and we are promoting all things Huntsville and Madison in Madison County. So we are really excited to just kind of showcase what our city has to offer every Saturday in April.
Katie Stamps: [00:01:09] I am Katie Stamps. I'm the Preservation Planner for the city of Huntsville. So I do a lot of work with our local historic districts, I assist homeowners and every now and then I get the pleasure of doing a walking tour for folks in the historic district. So I'm very excited to be a part of this April Walking Tours this month.
Melea Hames: [00:01:26] Cool. See, I've got the experts with me again today. Okay, normally we answer our Facebook question at the end of our episode. But since we're going to be talking about this answer throughout the episode, let's find out what our followers wanted to know. The winning question is, what historic downtowns in North Alabama have walking tours? Alright, so everyone, listen up because that's what we're going to be talking about through the whole episode. Let's start with the simplest question, Beth, can you explain what the April Walking Tours are?
Beth Ridgeway: [00:01:57] So in the simplest explanation, it is a free guided walking tour in one of the historic districts or cities and it is happening throughout the state of Alabama every Saturday in the month of April. And so we have been doing this for several years now and it is just such a big hit and we love being able to share the stories and the architecture and the history behind these homes and areas that you see.
Melea Hames: [00:02:24] Yeah, there are some gorgeous homes in downtown Huntsville. I mean just breathtaking and it's so cool that Alabama is the only state in the nation to hold a statewide simultaneous walking tour, so that's pretty neat too.
Beth Ridgeway: [00:02:37] I know, and can I tell you why?
Melea Hames: [00:02:39] Yes.
Beth Ridgeway: [00:02:41] So well, I just think this is very interesting. So, Lee Sentell who used to work here in Huntsville as one of the marketing people and was very high up in our company, he started the walking tours and when he moved to sweet home Alabama and he's head of marketing for all of the State of Alabama now, he is now implemented statewide because if it worked here, it's going to work everywhere else. It's just a great way to get out in front of people.
Melea Hames: [00:03:07] Yeah, that is so cool. Yeah, Lee Sentell is our Tourism Director for Alabama and he does an awesome job. So thanks for that little tidbit there.
Beth Ridgeway: [00:03:17] The more you know.
Melea Hames: [00:03:22] I love it. Katie, what do you think makes these such a hit and so successful year after year?
Katie Stamps: [00:03:30] Well, Huntsville has one of the best collections of architectural styles in the state of Alabama. So Huntsville specifically, we have homes that date all the way back to Alabama statehood in the early 1800s and then you can see styles that range from there all the way up to the space race in the 1960s and beyond. So I think just the variety of architecture that we have on display and then also the stories that go along with that history is so fascinating. So I think all within a very tight space and easily walkable tour, you can experience a whole range of histories which I think is very unique.
Melea Hames: [00:04:05] Yeah, that is really cool. So how would you suggest that someone choose a tour that they were going to enjoy the most? What would be your tips, Katie? And then Beth you can follow.
Katie Stamps: [00:04:18] I would say thinking about what areas of the community you want to see the most if you have a specific town maybe you haven't visited before. That would be a great way to learn about its history. Then do some research and you can go online and find information about each of these areas and see what looks the most interesting to you I think would be two ways you could do that.
Melea Hames: [00:04:40] Okay.
Beth Ridgeway: [00:04:41] Yeah I'm going to be honest. I've lived in Madison for, gosh, over 15 years now. And so what's so funny to me is the first time I went on a walking tour is I had no idea about some of the homes in our historic downtown Madison that I had never seen before. I was just like, that house came from J. C. Penney? Like you ordered that from a catalog? First of all, I did not know you could do that, and second of all, they throw chickens off the roof of this building. Why do they do that?
And so they tell you the stories and they tell you not only is just a beautiful house to look at but they give you the architecture and the stories behind it. So I would say start within your own neighborhood, and even though you may have lived there forever and ever and ever you will learn something new. Then because there are four Saturdays in April, go pick some other ones. It's free. It's fun and you get out and walk a little bit.
Melea Hames: [00:05:34] Yeah. That is really cool. So do you want to tell us a little bit more about this J. C. Penney house?
Beth Ridgeway: [00:05:41] Right. What is so funny in Madison basically Madison was not really -- the way Madison was born was it was not really the cool place to be for a really long time because it had a railroad running through it. But once things happened on the river and they were like oh well sometimes the railroad is faster than the river. The town really started growing up. So our little downtown street, you can see where the Madison it's called Madison Café. Is it Madison City Café?
Katie Stamps: [00:06:14] Main Street Café, I think it is.
Beth Ridgeway: [00:06:15] Main Street Café. Thank you. So in Main Street Café, you can see where the old jail cell was. You can see the gazebo in the roundhouse and it's very quaint downtown. But when you go through you get to see all of these beautiful houses and to see one that really was ordered from a catalog is just so interesting to me. Then you read about Buttermilk Alley and you're like why is it called Buttermilk Alley? It's because when people would get off the train and they may not have had a place to live. Back in the day, they would be called Hobo's. So they would go and they would know that this is a place where you could go get some buttermilk and have some bread and they would be nice enough to give people some buttermilk and bread in Buttermilk Alley.
Melea Hames: [00:07:01] Oh wow, that's cool.
Beth Ridgeway: [00:07:03] I know. It really is a lot of fun to know the stories behind some of the streets and everything like that. Then I've also gone to the one that's very close to Madison, the Mooresville walking tour, and that is just gorgeous to see because it was one of the tiniest little pockets of the population with its post office and it has 1818 farms. So not only do you get to hear sheep in the background, you get to see some of these old, gorgeous homes and churches as well.
Melea Hames: [00:07:32] Yeah, and that is one that goes on all throughout April as well as in Mooresville. And it's just a quaint little place and the town is older than the state. So there's a lot of history to learn about there, that's cool. Katie, tell us about one of the tours that you've given in Huntsville.
Katie Stamps: [00:07:51] So I'll be doing the Twickenham Tour, which will be on April the 2nd. So that's the first Saturday of the month. I love starting kind of near the downtown core of the city. So we talk about Alabama statehood and the different places that are related to that. Then we just kind of take a stroll around and like I said before, we see houses that are dating back to the early 1800s and they all have very fascinating histories. We have a house that was once painted butter yellow to continue on with the buttermilk theme.
We have a house that was painted butter yellow in the 1800s in honor of a jersey cow named Lily Flag. They had a giant party that was held by the owner at this house. And so we actually get to see that house, it's no longer butter-yellow unfortunately, but we do get to learn about these little just snapshots of time that the stories that have kind of trickled down through the years that we still remember. So, I kind of focus a lot on my tours on architecture because that's my educational background. I do a lot of architectural styles and features and things like that, but then I also like to tie in those stories and just one of my favorite things is connecting history to the present day. So I like to kind of weave those stories in and then kind of talk about like why it looks the way it looks today.
One of the things that I get to do a lot with the homeowners that live in the historic districts is helping them preserve their homes. We talk about that as well, as why do we have these beautiful historic neighborhoods? It's because people who have the means and the desire to preserve them, they’ve preserved them for us, for our community. So that's something that I want to foster an appreciation for because they're the reason why we have these beautiful buildings to look at in the first place.
Melea Hames: [00:09:38] Yeah, that is so neat. That is really cool. And like I said, there's a ton of history that has trickled down throughout the years and in downtown Huntsville and Madison. So that is really cool. And there are several other historic downtowns in North Alabama that offer April Walking Tours. There are the Athens Saturday walks and they meet each Saturday in April at the Limestone Tour, Athens Limestone Tourism Office in Big Spring Park. They go through “The Betty” Historic District, the Downtown Athens Historic District, Athens Cemetery, Athens State and a few others.
There's a lot to learn there. We talked about Mooresville where you can meet at the post office there and then they go out at 9:45 there. Most of the other tours begin at 10 a.m. Now, this one I live in Decatur. So this one I'm kind of excited about going on for the April Walking Tours in Decatur. But the first one on April 2nd is called the Downtown Crime Tour. Thank you. Special effects there. But it talks about bootleggers, bloodletters, and brothels. So you had me at bootleggers. This one could be quite interesting. They do, one with the Scottsboro boy's house tour, the Decatur cemetery tour. And then there's the Albany district in Delano Park which Delano Park is my favorite. So that might be one that I do.
Then like a lot of these towns, there's a rich railroad history. So there's a streetcars and railroads tour as well. Then in Florence, they've got several tours that they do each Saturday. One of the cool ones and one of the most popular ones I think is the Forks of Cyprus. It was that old plantation that was built in like 1822, I think. And then it burned to the ground several several several years ago. But the only thing standing are the columns from the house. You have probably seen the pictures of that. So they do a tour and they go through the history of that and then the U&A campus and several others.
Then there are four in Lawrence County as well. There's one in Molten Town Creek, Mount Hope in Courtland. And it'll be each Saturday in April. Then of course you've got the two in Huntsville that's going to be on April 2nd and the 9th and then there's two in downtown Madison on April 16th and 23. Now I know that there's a lot of information to throw at you all at one time but have no fear because we've put together a blog post with all of that information, the dates, the times, the locations and you can find that at northalabama.org. Okay. So to wrap up, what are your personal favorite parts of the April Walking Tours, Katie, do you want to start and then we can finish with Beth?
Katie Stamps: [00:12:39] Sure. I mean I love being outside. So finally it's springtime and that's a good time to get out to do something that's both free and outside and get to experience either a new community or be a tourist in your hometown and get to learn something new about the place that you've lived in for a long time. I love sharing Huntsville history so anytime I can do that with people whether they've lived here for a long time or they're just visiting, I love being able to do that. And for me, there's always something new to learn. So that's my favorite part is just getting to learn something new. And honestly, you could go on a tour with either the same or different tour guide and probably learn something new each time. So I think it's a great way to experience a new place or somewhere that you live.
Melea Hames: [00:13:21] Yeah, cool.
Beth Ridgeway: [00:13:23] And I would just say I just love how inclusive it is. It is for families, it is for anyone who loves history, and I will tell you most of these are stroller wheelchair-friendly at least in the Huntsville and Madison ones. Just so that people know that if you are able to, you can roll your wheelchair or you can roll your stroller up there so that everyone has a chance to see it. Then at least for the Huntsville Madison ones, you can bring your dog as long as it's leashed in a nice little pupper. I just love seeing people learn, oh, this is a Spite House? Like who knew we had such Petty Betty's over here in Huntsville. It's just so funny to be like, I don't like you so I'm going to build my house so high that you don't have a view anymore, right?
I love being able to hear those stories and have people say like, oh, okay, well if this is that kind of architecture, maybe when I go someplace else I will be able to say, oh, I know that kind of a window style or I know what this looks like. That's a federalist. That's very clear-cut and not very frill. I think that's really cool to learn something, be inclusive and then have your dogs out there and walk around.
Melea Hames: [00:14:36] Yeah, that is really cool. Yeah. And a lot of these too they go on. Even if it's kind of sprinkling they do kind of go on rain or shine, so you might want to wear some rain boots and watch the weather bring an umbrella.
Beth Ridgeway: [00:14:50] Yes, I will tell you, I've been out there and I've been like, it's the end of April like surely it can't be that cold and I'm just like huddled up in like a parka, but I still learned something and I still have fun. So you never can tell with this crazy Alabama weather, but just be prepared and have fun.
Melea Hames: [00:15:06] That's true. And we do know that it is probably going to rain the last weekend in April in Huntsville.
Beth Ridgeway: [00:15:13] That's why we put the Madison one there right now.
Melea Hames: [00:15:19] It's a little inside Huntsville joke. If you know it's probably going to rain the last weekend in April. Okay, well that is so cool and I'm so grateful that you all joined me today and I'm excited to get out and walk this April in North Alabama. So now for our listeners out there, where can they find you on social media, Beth?
Beth Ridgeway: [00:15:43] They can find us using the hashtag #iheartHSV and then if you find us online you can look for Visit Huntsville and we will be underneath that and I will say just so that everyone knows like the walking tours don't take up your whole day. It will be about an hour and a half at the most just a heads up.
Melea Hames: [00:16:07] And Katie, where can we find you?
Katie Stamps: [00:16:08] So the Huntsville Historic Preservation Commission is on Facebook and then we also have an Instagram account which is @huntsvillepreservation. And so we post all sorts of beautiful historic homes in the Huntsville area. So if you want to take a sneak peek before you go on a tour to see, we always tell you which historic district that home is located in. So if you go to that feed on Instagram, you can kind of see what types of homes you'll be seeing throughout the month of April.
Melea Hames: [00:16:38] Okay, cool. So everyone, give those a follow and that way you can keep up with when the tours are and learn something in the process. Well, awesome. North Alabama social media platforms are linked in the description. Thanks for joining us. And we'll be back next time with more about Unexpected Adventures in North Alabama.
Voice-over: [00:16:58] This has been another episode of the Unexpected Adventures in North Alabama Podcast, part of the Destination Marketing Podcast Network, hosted by Melea Hames and produced by Relic.
[End of transcript]
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