LaGrange Mountain

Just outside Leighton, Alabama sits LaGrange “mountain” and on top of this mountain flows a spring that has been attracting human life thousands of years. Archaeologists have dated human life at the rock shelter atop LaGrange between 9,000 and 11,000 years ago. It is best known as the location of LaGrange College, Alabama’s first state-chartered college, active from 1830-1855 – when it moved to nearby Florence, and later evolved into the University of North Alabama. Local citizens then reorganized the Leighton site into LaGrange Military Academy during the Civil War.Since 1995, the LaGrange Living Historical Association has administered the site as an historical landmark and cultural landscape, inclusive of frontier-era buildings and interpretation. The surrounding area also retains an interesting distilling legacy. Now, Dawson Distillery draws inspiration and literal connection from the water, as “the first legal moonshine operation in Northwest Alabama since Prohibition.”