This cache is part of a series of North Alabama Civil War Trail. The North Alabama Bientennial Passport is available from http://www.northalabama.org/. The tour will take you around north Alabama to visit 20 historic sites. It will not be necessary to pay an admission charge to find any of the caches although some may charge admission to tour their facility. A paper punch will be in the cache and should be used to punch the appropriate spot on the passport. If you choose to find the cache before all caches and the passport are available just punch a piece of paper with the cache name and date found, this will be accepted for your coin. 200 trackable geocoins are available to the first 200 cachers to complete the series. Several locations in North Alabama will have the coins and their location is on the passport page of the above link.
Pope’s Tavern and Museum
Pope’s Tavern filled with heavy hearts during the Civil War. Andrew Jackson kicked the mud off his boots there. Homesick soldiers died in hospital beds there. Sweaty horses, stagecoaches, travelers who’d fought underbrush, pock-marked roads, and fear of assault pulled in for a night’s rest there.
It was a time when all men ages 16 to 60 were ordered to volunteer for battle. The wealthy were wanting for bread, and salt was so rare that people boiled the dirt from smokehouse floors to get it. Union and Confederate hands wrenched the city from each other 40 times. Though Florence was hard-hit, scarred, and bruised by the Civil War, many historic places still stand, preserved for your tour-like Pope’s Tavern & Museum filled with antiquities, relics, and stories.
One of the area’s oldest buildings-once a stagecoach stop, tavern and inn, hospital and command center for both Northern and Southern armies-the museum houses a wealth of local and Civil War history. A rare Kennedy Long Rifle, a Confederate Colonel’s uniform, a vertically strung piano-one of only four ever made.
Located in downtown Florence on Jackson’s Military Road carved out by Andrew Jackson himself as a shortcut to move supply wagons and artillery from Nashville to New Orleans.