A Patriotic Family Road Trip in Alabama

Alabama State Capitol

Montgomery, AL

A National Historic Landmark in Montgomery that has witnessed some of the most consequential moments in American civic history.

U.S. Space & Rocket Center

Huntsville, AL

The world's largest space museum, the official visitor center for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

Rosa Parks Museum

Montgomery, AL

A museum at the corner where Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat.

Foley Railroad Museum

Foley, AL

A museum in Foley's restored 1909 L&N depot, the line that brought settlers to the farm town in the early 1900s.

USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park

Mobile, AL

A South Dakota-class battleship and the submarine USS Drum, both open to walk through.

Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site

Tuskegee, AL

Moton Field, where the first Black military pilots in the U.S. Army Air Forces trained during World War II.

Fort Morgan State Historic Site

Gulf Shores, AL

A brick fort guarding Mobile Bay, scene of the 1864 battle where Admiral Farragut is said to have cried "Damn the torpedoes!"

Edmund Pettus Bridge

Selma, AL

The bridge where marchers were beaten on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.

Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument

Birmingham, AL

The district of the 1963 Birmingham campaign, including 16th Street Baptist Church, where four girls were killed by a bomb.

Ivy Green

Tuscumbia, AL

The birthplace of Helen Keller, with the water pump where she first understood the word "water."

Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church

Montgomery, AL

The church where Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor during the Montgomery bus boycott, a block from the state Capitol.

Historic Huntsville Depot

Huntsville, AL

Completed in 1860, the oldest surviving railroad depot in Alabama, where Confederate prisoners held by Union troops left graffiti on the walls.

Pond Spring, the General Joe Wheeler Home

Hillsboro, AL

The home of Joseph Wheeler, a Confederate cavalry general who later served as a U.S. Army general in the Spanish–American War.

Horseshoe Bend National Military Park

Daviston, AL

The site of Andrew Jackson's March 27, 1814 victory over the Red Stick Creek, which ended the Creek War.

Fort Gaines Historic Site

Dauphin Island, AL

A brick fort at the mouth of Mobile Bay that surrendered after the Battle of Mobile Bay in August 1864.

Alabama Constitution Village

Huntsville, AL

A living-history site on the spot where delegates wrote Alabama's first constitution in 1819, the year it became a state.

Huntsville-Madison County Veterans Memorial

Huntsville, AL

A downtown memorial plaza with bronze figures and a fountain honoring the area's veterans of every war.

Jesse Owens Memorial Park

Oakville, AL

A park and museum at the birthplace of Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Unclaimed Baggage Center

Scottsboro, AL

A store that has bought and resold the contents of lost airline luggage since 1970, with a small museum of odd finds.

Ave Maria Grotto

Cullman, AL

A hillside of 125 miniature buildings made from stone, shells and glass by Benedictine monk Joseph Zoettl over four decades.

Magnolia Springs River Mail

Magnolia Springs, AL

A river town where the mail has been delivered to riverside homes by boat since 1915, the only year-round water mail route in the continental U.S.