Rushing brooks and streams slice through Alabama’s dark forests, then join to form rivers and mighty waterways. Here, in the Heart of Dixie, is more navigable water than in any other state — a 1,350-mile system so much a part of Alabama’s history that rivers form the dominant element in the state’s Great Seal.

Here, too, are vast reaches of sweet gum, yellow poplar, and pine. After years of reforestation, the amount of land covered by trees remains the same — about 65 percent — as when Spanish explorers first arrived in 1519.

The north of Alabama is dominated by the green mountains and valleys of the Appalachian Highland. The once-wild Tennessee River loops through this part of the state, its fury tamed by a system of Tennessee Valley Authority dams. Farther south, the mountains soften into wooded hills, the hills into a gentle coastal plain. From this plain much of the continent’s fresh water drains into the Gulf of Mexico, carried there by the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers. Along these rivers, stevedores once loaded cotton onto steamboats for shipment to the port of Mobile.

Little River Canyon National Preserve, Alabama

The History of Alabama State Park