Bluff Park

By Heather Jones Skaggs

The community of Bluff Park is home to a variety of residents, ranging from retirees to working families. Historically speaking, Bluff Park was first developed as a mountain resort and summer vacation site. Gardner Cole Hale bought the mountain property in the 1860s and called it Hale Springs. One of the first recorded uses of the name Bluff Park was with the Bluff Park Hotel, built in 1907. After its resort days, the area became more residential. Several of the founding families in Bluff Park settled on the mountain, building homes and farms. One such family, the Hales, ran a lumber mill, a cotton gin, and an icehouse. The Tyler family ran a large dairy farm after they moved to the area around 1888. The community school started around 1899 as a one-room schoolhouse and church, and Bluff Park Elementary is now one of the top elementary schools in the city of Hoover.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Feb 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781439645413

Heather Jones Skaggs

Bluff Park became a �cyber� community in 2006 with the launch of the Bluff Park community website BluffParkAL.org. In Images of America: Bluff Park, former editor for FOX6 News and current BluffParkAL.org volunteer Heather Jones Skaggs presents a collection of photographs and memories from family archives to illustrate the quiet mountain community�s growth into a historical hot spot.

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everyone.

INTRODUCTION

Bluff Park is the oldest residential community within the city limits of Hoover, Alabama. Many residents of Bluff Park grew up here, went to college, started families, and returned to the Bluff—including me. I grew up in and around Bluff Park. My husband and I looked at many homes in surrounding communities, but they just did not have the community feel that Bluff Park has. So we moved home. I am very happy to share this community with you in Images of America: Bluff Park.

Over 100 years ago, Bluff Park was a vacation and health resort due to its natural spring waters flowing from the mountain. The area has been known by several names depending on who the primary owner of the property was and its use. Before the area was known as Bluff Park, it was called Spencer Springs, named after Octavious Spencer, who built around 40 log cabins and a pavilion in the 1850s. Spencer used the area as a summer resort. Guests could go down from the crest to two natural springs: a Freestone water spring and a Chalybeate water spring. The springs were said to have medicinal value and were popular with resort guests.

The name changed again in 1863 when Gardner Hale, of Prattville, purchased the property. Hale kept the land as a resort area and added to it. He renamed his resort Hale Springs. The Hale name is prominent throughout the history of Bluff Park. Gardner Hale’s son Daniel Pratt Hale ran a bed-and-breakfast type establishment called Liberty Hall and another called Pinnacle House. Pinnacle House was on top of the mountain and was used for lodging; it was said to have the best views on the mountain.

As industry grew in the outskirts of the area, the need for more roads became apparent. In 1892, the Hale Lumber Company built an access road over an old wagon trail to transport lumber. This road gave visitors to the resort a way to get up and down the mountain from Oxmoor Valley below. Liberty Hall and Pinnacle house were the main attractions at Hale Springs from 1890 until about 1907. As time went on, visitors and landowners of Hale Springs became more interested in the view from the bluff rather than the springs and their healing properties. Residents of the area started digging wells, thus removing the need to take trips to the springs for water. This was around the time that the name changed to Bluff Park. One account records that the civic club came up with the name as the springs were becoming obsolete and the views of the bluff became the attraction.

After the death of Gardner Hale, part of the land was put up for sale in a public auction. Hale’s son, George Gardner Hale, continued the family legacy in Bluff Park by way of his own sons, William, Evan, and George Jr. Called simply the Hale brothers by longtime Bluff Park residents, the brothers did a large amount of the home construction along the crest. William, Evan, and George Jr. built several homes on what is now Shades Crest Road for their families. The homes still stand today as part of the Shades Crest Road Historic District as placed in the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in November 1996. The overseer’s home, which was lived in but not built by William Hale, is the oldest historical home in the area at 120 years old. The first caretaker or overseer of the property on record is William Winsley Morgan, who lived in the house with his wife, Eliza Hale Morgan, and their two sons. Morgan’s niece was Sophronia Hale, William Hale’s mother. According to the Hale family descendants, the two families swapped homes. The Morgans moved to the Hales’ home in Dadeville, Alabama, and the William Hale family moved into the overseer’s home. Hale was one of the first overseers of the orchards on the property. As overseer, he would manage the cultivation of trees and the shipping of fruit in season. Some of the stone terraces used in the farming are still visible in the yard and in the yards of adjoining neighbors. After William and Evan married, they built homes for their families on Shades Crest Road. In 1908, George Jr. built a home for his sister Susie on Shades Crest Road next to their mother’s home.

The Tyler family, from which Tyler Road gets its name, started moving to Alabama in 1888 when William Marion Tyler came from Georgia to Alabama and purchased land to build a farm and homes. William Marion Tyler’s brothers James Henry Tyler and Jobe Tyler also moved to Alabama, buying land and building homes. The Tylers had a dairy farm and grew many types of vegetables. William Marion Tyler married into the Hale family when he wed Mattie Maude Hale in 1891.

In 1907, following the sale of the Hale Springs land, the Bluff Park Hotel Company was formed. It operated from 1911 to 1923 under various owners. A fire destroyed the hotel in 1925 and it was not rebuilt.

Some other families on the bluff were Hanahan, Yates, Northington, Latham, Chambers, and Aldrich. Aldrich Villa was the home of William F. Aldrich. After his death in 1925, the house was rented as a nightclub for a time until it burned down in the late 1930s. The property ownership went to the state of Alabama. A fire tower was put on the property, and it became a well-known landmark in the community. On the same property, there are stone steps that are thought to be left over from the nightclub.

The Dison family moved to the Hale Springs–Bluff Park area and were active in many local activities. They bought land from