Imagine this headline in newspapers on Friday, October 29, 2021:

PAUL W. BRYANT DRIVE 200 YEARS OLD TODAY!

Every street and town lot in the original city of Tuscaloosa turns 200 years old this week.

On Friday, October 29, 2021, Tuscaloosa will experience an anniversary that has never had a popular commemoration in all of the town's history. Friday will be the 200th anniversary of an American citizen being allowed to own a piece of T-town dirt. On Monday, October 29, 1821, private land ownership in the original city of Tuscaloosa began. When the sun comes up this Friday, every street and town lot in Tuscaloosa will experience it's 200th birthday.

There are no buildings standing in Tuscaloosa which witnessed this event and all we have to show for it are our present-day streets, the boundaries of our town lots and the graves of the men and women who occupied them two centuries ago.

Tuscaloosa's first settlers arrived in 1816 but the land of the town was not legally ready to be sold until the fall of 1821. By 1821, probably as many as 600 souls lived in log cabins and shacks constructed by driving logs into the ground and nailing vertical planks on the outside of them. These structures were randomly scattered along the crest of River Hill from present-day 28th Avenue down to about 23rd Avenue. For the first five years of its life as a town, Tuscaloosa's citizens were all squatters. The section of land they lived upon had been reserved from public sale by an act of Congress passed the same day that the Alabama Territory was established on March 3, 1817. It took over 4 years for President James Monroe to order the survey of Section 22 of Township 21 South, Range 10 West.

Finally in the spring of 1821, the Section 22 was subdivided and a street grid established. Many Tuscaloosans found that their dwelling was located in the middle of a street designed to be 132 feet wide. These buildings doomed to demolition included the town's best tavern and the Tuscaloosa County jail which were both located in the middle of present-day Greensboro Avenue between the present-day old First National Bank building and the BAMA Theater. President Monroe ordered that all of the 511 town lots laid out in the survey be sold at public auction at the Tuscaloosa Land Office on Monday, October 29, 1821.

From the May 12, 1899 TUSCALOOSA WEEKLY TIMES: "At last, in the spring of 1821, after long and impatient waiting by the citizens, the town of Tuscaloosa was laid off and the lots sold at public sale. The earliest deed of a lot that I find on record is dated October 31, 1821. William Toxey sells to Cincinattus Lacy, 'the east half of lot 109 in the town of Tuscaloosa, which adjoins Lot 108, as by reference to a plan of said town will now presently appear.' " ~ Dr W. S. Wyman

How appropriate that the first town lot that was sold at auction on October 29 and subdivided two days later would be the only one which was unaltered by the town plan of Tuscaloosa. In fact, the entire street grid of the town is based upon the angle of the western half of LOT 109, the northeast corner of present-day Greensboro Avenue (Market Street) and University Boulevard (Main or Broad Street), the present-day location of the old 1st National Bank building.