Fantastic Find: "The prehistoric shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico is so fertile you can see it from space"

The Washington Post published a piece about the region of Mississippi and Alabama known as the Black Belt and used this satellite image to illustrate their point:

It is subtle, and it blends in well with the surroundings, and if you are not looking for it there is a good chance you will scan right over it. But once someone points it out on a true-color map, it is impossible to unsee: a crescent of off-hue land in Mississippi and Alabama that is so perfectly-arced it looks unnatural.

[NASA via The Washington Post]

More from the Post's article:

In reality, this arc is super-fertile, cultivated land surrounded by dense forest. It is the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico as it existed 145 million years ago.

[NASA via The Washington Post]

As you can see, Macon County is one of the Alabama counties in the Black Belt and that's where my Warren, Hardy and Freeman ancestors moved as soon as the land was forcibly taken from the Creek Indians. They settled in an area called Cotton Valley which is located in the southern part of Macon County.

[The University of Alabama Department of Geography via TrueSouth.com]

Before intensive agriculture changed the land forever, the Black Belt comprised at least 356,000 acres of open prairie of which only a small fragment remains. Here's more information (with photos) about some of the plants and insects found there.

Cotton Valley proved to be a stopping point on my ancestors' way west as younger generations all moved on to Texas in the 1850s.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.