The Founding of Dothan, Alabama

The Founding of Dothan, Alabama. . , Side A , In the late 1700s and 1800s, horse and ox-drawn covered wagons from Charleston, Savannah, and Jacksonville traveled across the South as pioneer families searched for a place to build new homes and to start a new life. Those pioneers, who passed through the vast pine forests in the southeast corner of the territory that was later to become the state of Alabama, would often stop at a spring known as Poplar Head. Poplar Spring, named for the poplar trees that encircled the glade where the cool water, or ”head” (as springs were often called) welled from the earth. It was where ancient Indian trails met, crossed, and then continued on. The glade where the spring was located was often used by Indians from the various tribes of the Creek Confederacy as a meeting place and as a campground. By 1885, the hamlet had grown into a village.

Side B , The new settlers realized that if the community’s growth was to be sustained, they would need a governing body and local law enforcement. On November 10, 1885, the people of Poplar Head voted to incorporate and took Dothan as the new town’s name since there already was a Poplar Head, Alabama. The name came from Genesis 37:17 “….for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan.” “A writer can put on paper the history of the town, but the history belongs to those who not only lived through the years documented, but who formed and molded our town into the city we know as Dothan.” – “Dothan, A Pictorial History,” 1984, by Wendell H. Stepp and daughter Pamela Ann Stepp.