Ghost towns in Alabama are a popular subject for more reasons than you may think. For instance, it is often required that we survey an abandoned property or ghost town in order to recreate a past event in order to help determine if the event could have actually occured as described in old newspaper articles or testimony of witnesses.
The romantic version of the Vine and Olive Colony is based in American mythology about the frontier and the “can-do” spirit of the pioneers. According to folklore, in 1817 exiled French military aristocrats loyal to the recently-deposed Emperor Napoleon founded the Vine and Olive Colony at the confluence of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers.