Green Bottom Inn
Green Bottom Inn was an early 19th-century tavern and racetrack in what is now Normal, Alabama, United States, first opened in 1815 in what was then Mississippi Territory by John Connally. The inn was located on a road known as the Meridian Pike, outside what is today Huntsville. Connally bought the land at the Alabama land sales of 1809, "on the road leading north from Twickenham Town to Flint River." A commemorative plaque was placed on the site in 1930.
The inn building, made in part from locally quarried stone, later became part of the campus of Alabama A&M University until it burned down in February 1931. Set atop a small hill, it had seven porches and a fireplace that could hold a whole ox for roasting if need be. It had its own spring, stables for horses, and cabins for the enslaved. The stables were run and the horses managed by a man of color named James Conley. According to an account published at the time of the 1931 fire: "The Inn, itself, contained only two large rooms, one of which served as an office and the other as the bar...Sleeping quarters were provided by a number of one-room buildings on the premises and it was the custom in that day and time to sleep as many men in one room as the room could accommodate." According a 1902 history of the educational progress of African Americans:
Many of the old Connally-era buildings, however, were converted for the university:
Some of the stone from the inn was recycled for the construction of Bibb Graves Hall at the university, and the freshwater spring remained accessible as of 1975.
In its heyday, the inn was also the site of a popular horse race track, known as Green Bottom Race Track or Green-bottom Turf, which "attracted many politicians and statesmen." Horses that raced there included Grey Gander, Molly Long Legs, Bill Austin, Lady Huntsville, Lady Nashville and Bolivia. Connally was said to have sold Grey Gander for $20,000. Among the men who raced horses there were the early colonizers of Alabama, Andrew Jackson and John Coffee. James Monroe and James K. Polk were also reported to be patrons.
The Green Bottom Inn was also the site of an antebellum slave market. Among the people sold there was William Hooper Councill, who later founded the Historically [black colleges and universities|historically black college or university] Alabama A&M near the same spot.