Monday,  May 11, 2020 will mark a significant TUSCALOOSA BICENTENNIAL anniversary. On that day in 1820, President Monroe ordered that a federal land office be established in Tuscaloosa to sell all the public land that had been surveyed in this district. It will have been 200 years this October of 2020 since SOME of the land on which Tuscaloosa now exists finally was owned by the American citizens who founded the town over four years earlier. Prior to 1820, every one of the "6 to 800 souls" who lived around the south bank of the Falls of Black Warrior was a squatter.  The owners of Newtown kicked off THE TUSCALOOSA LAND RUSH when they placed ads in the Nashville and Knoxville papers in December of 1820. (from the December 12, 1820 KNOXVILLE REGISTER)

The Feds @ the Tuscaloosa Land Office piddled around for another year before they laid out THE ORIGINAL CITY (a fractional section of a township bounded by the river on the north; present-day Queen City on the East; present-day MLK, Jr. on the west and present-day 15th Street on the south). President Monroe ordered 511 lots (each city block was cut into four equal lots. On most downtown blocks, you can see this property line when you walk the sidewalk halfway between the corners of the block)  be put up for sale at a Tuscaloosa auction on Monday, October 29, 1821, with a minimum bid of $6 per acre. We in the present-day continue to live our lives within this almost two centuries old grid of city streets and blocks. (from the October 20, 1821 NATCHEZ GAZETTE)