User:Drmies/Moscow

Moscow is an unincorporated community in Marengo County, Alabama, United States.

History
Moscow was founded in the early 1800s by Turner Brashears, an Anglo-American trader originally from Maryland, who was working in the Choctaw territory in what later became Mississippi and Alabama. He had married a Choctaw woman, and reportedly had good relations with Franchimastabe and Taboca, two important Choctaw leaders. Its first appearance on an Alabama map, according to Virginia Foscue, was in 1835. It was named for the Russian city by a local leader, Count Lefebre Desnouettes, who reportedly had been with Napoleon Bonaparte, riding in the coach with him while the French army retreated from Moscow in 1812. The road to it, which starts at Demopolis, is called the Moscow Road. Irina Vasiliev adds that "in the Sunday, 14 March 1948, Birmingham newspaper account, the local residents claimed that the name was an Indian word, though no one could say what it meant, and they denied a connection to 'that' Moscow."

Across the Tombigbee River, on the river's west bank in Sumter County, is a geological feature called Moscow Landing, which runs for about 1,5 km. It shows a "spectacular exposure of the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary".

Rooster Bridge
The Rooster Bridge used to cross the river at Moscow, about 11 miles southwest of Demopolis, Alabama; it was the final stage in what was called the Dixie Overland Highway, an auto trail across the Southern United States from Georgia to California, conceived in 1914 by an automobile club in Savannah, Georgia. (Currently US Route 80 mostly follows that route.) The Rooster Bridge was opened in 1925, and it was funded with "money raised from a public auction of roosters donated by famous personalities."

The rooster sale was the brainchild of Frank Inge Derby (1881-1963), a local businessman who in 1919 had organized a rooster and livestock sale to finance the construction of roads in York, Alabama. Derby, with the help of Congressman William Bacon Oliver, managed to get rooster from Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, and Georges Clemenceau, which were shipped to Washington DC, where they were picked up by a delegation from Alabama. The roosters were auctioned in Demopolis, on August 14 and 15, by which time there were some 600 roosters for sale, including one donated by Helen Keller. Their sale raised $56,000--but $44,000 of that was fetched by Woodrow Wilson's cock.

The bridge was called the Memorial Bridge, and it was opened officially in 1925. The bridge was replaced by a new bridge, built upriver (toward Demopolis). The old bridge was torn in 1980, and a historical marker is placed at the new bridge, on the west end. The marker reads, in part, "The idea was 'to bridge the 'Bigbee with cocks': Roosters would be solicited from world-famous persons and an auction and barbeque held in the city of Demopolis for the benefit of the bridge. Congressmen 'Buck' Oliver, Admiral William S. Benson, and Secretary of Navy Josephus Daniels helped sell President Wilson on the idea. He and the others of the Big Four, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando, who were meeting at the Versailles Conference, shipped roosters on the USS Northern Pacific. Governor Kilby sent 27 prominent Alabamians to the White House to receive the roosters from President Wilson. By August 14, 1919, 600 roosters (and one hen from Helen Keller) had arrived in Demopolis. President Wilson’s rooster auctioned for $44,000."

Other sources cite slightly different numbers, and one noted that whoever bought Woodrow Wilson's rooster did not actually pay. The name "Memorial Bridge" was changed officially to "Rooster Ridge" in 1959. In 1971, the Alabama legislature decided that any bridge across the Tombigbee at that place should be called "Rooster Bridge". An image representing the bridge is on the "Alabama Bronze Map", on the front lawn of the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Geography
Moscow is located at 32.438°N, -87.996°W and has an elevation of 187 ft.

Notable people

 * John Holladay (1798-1861), LDS settler