Gold rushes in Cleburne and Tallapoosa Counties attracted thousands of miners years before California's famous strike. In 1936, production at the Hog Mountain mine caused Alabama to be recognized as the top producer in the Appalachian states. In Hog Mountain's heyday, a local German settler discovered the precious metal while digging a wine cellar. In Log Pit, unscrupulous speculators "shot" ore into rock crevices and "salted" nuggets on land to enhance its sale value. A Cleburne County miner cleaned over eleven pounds of gold and was killed in a "free fight" all in one day. Join author Peggy Jackson Walls as she traces a century of gold mining in Alabama.

First published in 1989. Mas'udi was born in Baghdad about 896 AD, during the Caliphate of Mu'tadid and died in Egypt sometime around the year 956, eleven years after the Buwaihids, a Shi'a dynasty of Iranian origin, had occupied Baghdad and taken control of the Caliphate. His full name was Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husain ibn Ali ibn Abd Allah al-Mas'udi and he was notable as a Muslim historian. His two major works were Meadows of Gold (Muruj al-Dhahab) and the Book of Notification (Kitab al-Tanbih).

Green Gold is a thorough and valuable compilation of information on Alabama’s timber and forest products industry, the largest manufacturing industry in the sta Alabama has the third-largest commercial forest in the nation, after only Georgia and Oregon. Fully two-thirds of the state’s land supports the growth of over fifteen billion trees on twenty-two million acres, which explains why Alabama looks entirely green from space. Green Gold presents the story of human use of and impact on Alabama’s forests from pioneer days to the present, as James E. Fickle chronicles the history of the industry from unbridled greed and exploitation through virtual abandonment to revival, restoration, and enlightened stewardship. As the state’s largest manufacturing industry, forest products have traditionally included naval stores such as tar, pitch, and turpentine, especially in the southern longleaf stands; sawmill lumber, both hardwood and pine; and pulp and paper milling. Green Gold documents all aspects of the industry, including the advent of “scientific forestry” and the development of reforestation practices with sustained yields. Also addressed are the historical impacts of Native Americans and of early settlers who used axes, saws, and water- and steam-powered sawmills to clear and utilize forests. Along with an account of railroad logging and the big mills of the lumber bonanza days of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the book also chronicles the arrival of professional foresters to the state, who began to deal with the devastating legacy of “cut out and get out” logging and to fight the perennial curse of woods arson. Finally, Green Gold examines the rise of the tree farm movement, the rebirth of large-scale lumbering, the advent of modern environmental concerns, and the movement toward the “Fourth Forest” in Alabama.

“Imagine Cormac McCarthy's savage lyricism in a Paul Bowles desert landscape and you begin to enter the bleakly beautiful world of this mesmerizing, fable-like novel.”—The Independent Gold Dust is a classic story of the brotherhood between man and beast, the thread of companionship that is all the difference between life and death in the desert. It is a story of the fight to endure in a world of limitless and waterless wastes, and a parable of the struggle to survive in the most dangerous landscape of all: human society. Rejected by his tribe and hunted by the kin of the man he killed, Ukhayyad and his thoroughbred camel flee across the desolate Tuareg deserts of the Libyan Sahara. Between bloody wars against the Italians in the north and famine raging in the south, Ukhayyad rides for the remote rock caves of Jebel Hasawna. There, he says farewell to the mount who has been his companion through thirst, disease, lust, and loneliness. Alone in the desert, haunted by the prophetic cave paintings of ancient hunting scenes and the cries of jinn in the night, Ukhayyad awaits the arrival of his pursuers and their insatiable hunger for blood and gold.

Lists and describes battlefields, forts, historic mansions, pioneer settlements, civil rights monuments, and other historic sites