The Tombigbee Waterway carves out part of the western border of Alabama’s Central West. Visitors can explore life on the waterway at the Tom Bevill Visitors Center in Pickensville. There they also can board the U.S. Snagboat “Montgomery,” now permanently moored beside the center.

About 10 miles northeast of Pickensville is Carrollton and the Pickens County Courthouse. Folks come to stand across from the Courthouse and look at “the face in the window.” The image, which is said to be stamped indelibly on the lower right pane of the garret window, is supposed to be that of Henry Wells. Wells, imprisoned in the courthouse in the 1800’s, vowed to haunt members of a lynch mob who came for him on a stormy day. It seems, however, that he haunts the Courthouse instead.

Buried in Fellowship Cemetery near Vernon is the legendary train robber Rube Burrows. Aliceville is the burial place of James McCrory, George Washington’s bodyguard at Valley Forge. McCrory died in 1840 and is buried in Old Bethany Cemetery.

The city of Tuscaloosa is home to the University of Alabama, one of the state’s football powerhouses, as well as a number of fascinating museums. In one of them, the Alabama Museum of Natural History, is the Hodges Meteorite, which hit a Sylacauga woman in 1954.

Indian mounds in nearby Moundville tell the story of some of the state’s earliest residents. Twenty prehistoric mounds yield clues, many of them now housed in a museum on-site, about how Native Americans lived -- and celebrated their lives.

The rich soil of this part of Alabama yields one of the state’s finest crops. Chilton County is known for its peaches, some of the best grown in the nation. The county is becoming known for its antique shopping as well as more and more dealers open their doors to those who love to search out treasures from an earlier time. And the antiques aren’t just for the inside of the house. One spot in Chilton County brings visitors from around the south to find antique plants, especially roses.