Where History and Southern Charm Converg

Where History and Southern Charm Converge on the Coosa

By Daniel Schmidt

April 1, 2022

WETUMPKA, Ala. – It all started in the summer of 1991 with an aluminum canoe and a case of Miller Lite. Chris Carter was a computer programmer with the U.S. Air Force and heard from the old-timers that nothing beat the bass fishing on the Coosa when the river was moving. He was new to Wetumpka and eager to get plugged into the community.

When Carter and a friend arrived, the river was indeed moving - to the point where the infamous Moccasin Gap and its class II rapids were completely submerged. While it was a rocky start to his love affair with the river that splits the town of Wetumpka in two, it was not enough to keep him away for good.

Over the next three years, he was called upon time and time again to haul other people’s canoes and kayaks down to the base of Mitchell Dam. In his friend group, he was the only one with a reliable trailer and a truck to pull it. Little did he know that he would begin what would become the South’s largest sit-on-top kayak dealer.

Wetumpka, steeped in history, is named after the Muscogee Creek phrase for “rumbling waters.” The town lies just north of where the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers merge to become the Alabama River. It also sits in the shadow of a nearly 5-mile-wide asteroid impact crater estimated to be 85 million years old.

For almost 7,000 years, the area was inhabited by Native Americans until their lands were forcefully ceded to the United States following the signing of the Treaty of Fort Jackson. And, for over 100 years, the area around modern-day Wetumpka was of strategic importance due to its location near the convergence of the three rivers. Ultimately, the French and Americans both built forts, Fort Toulouse and Fort Jackson, at virtually the same exact location.

Today, tender leaves begin to poke through the Spanish moss clinging to the branches of trees swaying in the gentle March breeze. In a clearing just beyond that grove of oaks that envelope the entrance to Fort Toulouse-Jackson National Historic Park, soldiers prepare their muskets, bayonets and rifle cartridges for battle.

Two of the soldiers suddenly snatch their firearms from a splintering wooden rack whose peeling crimson paint has seen better days. When given the order to fire by their superior officer, only one of the muskets successfully fires. They repeat the exercise, and the result is the same. Misfires are apparently common.

Luckily, the stakes at the park’s living history day are lower than the battlefields of the era they reenact. For volunteers like Joe Thompson, it is the ultimate form of masquerade. His black top hat and sand-colored vest are part of his pioneer persona that he has spent 32 years curating across west Georgia and central Alabama.

“Oh, I’ve been doing this for just a little while,” he says with a twinkle in his eye and a suppressed grin on his face. The pace he moves at while twisting twine around the thin paper he uses to form the cartridges for his muskets betrays his experience. On the table sits his Ziploc bag full of grits, which he uses as a substitute for gunpowder. “It has the same consistency and sound when you rattle it as the real thing,” Thompson quipped.

Virtually everything the volunteers have is self-sourced. It can become an expensive hobby, especially if one is hellbent on historical authenticity. But it is not about the money.

It is about seeing the faces of children light up once they start a fire with the primitive kit of flint, stone and tinder Thompson has on hand or noticing the deck of playing cards soldiers of a bygone era used to entertain themselves. It helps them understand that they were just like us.

Despite the park’s struggle to find and keep volunteers due to COVID, the display put on by the six volunteers was more than worth the $2 cost of admission.

As the sun rose in the sky and stomachs began to grumble, it was time to find somewhere to eat. Grumpy Dog, voted the best hotdog in the Southeast in Southern Living, was the obvious choice.

Located a stone’s throw away from Bibb Graves Bridge where East Bridge Street, Company Street, and the aptly named Hill Street converge, the restaurant appears unassuming from the sidewalk. The black and gold embroidered cloth awning covers two of the six picnic tables located on the patio, and a stone bulldog statue guards the front door.

All kinds of customers, families with their children, couples and singles alike, come to consume their favorite ‘dawg. Inside the front room, a syrupy-sweet country accent towards the back of the line spoke up. “You should get the Southern. It’s my favorite,” Dianne Wilson said. “It comes with Pimento cheese.”

She and her husband, who prefers his hotdogs completely plain, are regulars at the Grumpy Dog, and Wilson is eager to influence an undecided customer’s decision. From behind the counter, Shelby Duke, a full-time employee who is also enrolled in online classes, added her opinion.

“You should also get the chocolate-dipped Key Lime pie,” Duke said. “I’ll have to run to the back to see if we still have some though because we always run out.” Fortunately, they still had at least one.

The buns came out slightly soggy due to the abundance of toppings, and the chili with meat chunks almost the size of the tip of a thumb had just enough spice to give one’s cold drink a sideways glance. The chilled chocolate shell surrounding the thick, creamy filling of the pie required some extra force to break through, and the moist graham cracker crust seemed to absorb some of the lime flavor. In total, three hotdogs, the pie and a bottle of Aquafina water cost $18.36.

Just five blocks north of the Grumpy Dog sits a misfit wooden building just off Company Street with two different tin roofs from two different eras. On the front porch is a faded checkerboard that uses rusted beer bottle caps as its pieces, and on the side of the building are dozens of mismatched sandals and water shoes hung by a string from the rafters.

Known as the “sandelier,” the collection has grown over the years as more customers lose footwear to a tree smack dab in the middle of the river that Chris Carter calls the “Tree of Lost Souls.”

A retired Air Force veteran and former city councilman, he sports a curly mane of hair that nearly reaches the base of his neck now that he is free from the expectations of bureaucracy. While he began Coosa River Adventures somewhat out of spite after a verbal altercation with an owner of a similar kayaking business in 1994, Carter was also drawn to the freedom it offered him after decades of 9 to 5 work, or as he calls it, “chasing the unattainable carrot at the end of the stick.”

“I still don’t know what I’m going to do when I grow up,” he said with a chuckle. Over the 27 years he has run Coosa River Adventures, he has flirted with disaster numerous times. There have been his old yellow buses that broke down while trying to get customers to the drop-off location and another time he almost incited a mutiny amongst his workers after trying to ratpack kayaks on a trailer to make the trip more efficient. Yet it is all still there.

Carter said that people from places as far away as Denmark and Australia have made the pilgrimage to Wetumpka to experience the rapids of a river that locals mostly ignore. For him, it has been validation of a statement he was ridiculed for making the cornerstone of his longshot city council campaign back in 2004: “Wetumpka is a destination.”

Over time, those validations began to pile up like the faded blue and red metal sheet advertising Babe Ruth’s 5-cent Bambino Cola and the other odd artifacts around the shop he has repurposed from his antique business. Ever since the spotlight of HGTV’s “Home Town Takeover” shone brightly on the town a year and a half ago, the idea does not seem so crazy anymore.

In a way, Coosa River Adventures is a microcosm of Wetumpka itself. Throughout the years, both teetered on the brink and found ways to reinvent themselves. It has never been pretty, yet they both remain. For Carter, it’s “not how much money you make, it’s about how much you keep.” And despite falling on tough times repeatedly since the first person stepped foot on the banks of the muddy Coosa River, Wetumpka kept that Southern charm that drew them there in the first place.