How well do you know Calhoun County?

Try not to use Google….

1. Calhoun County was once named _____ County.

• a. Pelham
• b. Benton
• c. Jackson
• d. Cheaha

2. Where’s the world’s largest office chair?

• a. Anniston
• b. Piedmont
• c. Weaver
• d. Oxford

3. In what year the county seat more from Jacksonville to Anniston?

• a. 1865
• b. 1920
• c. 1900
• d. 1917

4. Jacksonville was built on acreage purchased from who, under the Treaty of Cusseta of 1832?

• a. Lincoya
• b. Chinnabee
• c. Ladiga
• d. Menawa

5. In what year was Camp McClellan established?

• a. 1940
• b. 1941
• c. 1917
• d. 1900

6. Which community was home to John Pelham?

• a. Jacksonville
• b. Lickskillet
• c. Piedmont
• d. Alexandria

7. How long is the Ladiga Trail?

• a. 100 miles
• b. 50 miles
• c. 33 miles
• d. 64 miles

8. Cider Ridge was once the home to what?

• a. A Llama Farm
• b. An Apple Orchard
• c. A Bison Ranch
• d. A Winery

9. Cartoonist Tom Sims of Ohatchee created what comic strip?

• a. Little Orphan Annie
• b. Dennis the Menace
• c. Gasoline Alley
• d. Popeye

10. In what year were the JSU Gamecocks the NCAA Football Champions?

• a. 1992
• b. 1980
• c. 1985
• d. 2000

How did you do?

Answers:    B   A   C   C   C   D   C   B   D   A

Benton County was established in 1832, named for Thomas Hart Benton, with its county seat in Jacksonville. Benton was a political ally of John C. Calhoun, a slaveholder and a U.S. senator from South Carolina. Through the 1820s-1840s, Benton slowly came to the conclusion that slavery was wrong and that preservation of the union was paramount. In 1858, Alabama renamed Benton County as Calhoun County.

In 1981, Miller’s Office Supply in Anniston, Alabama, wanted to call attention to itself. Owner Leonard “Sonny” Miller had an inspired idea: he would build the world’s largest chair in the vacant lot next to his building. The result still stands today: a chair 33 feet tall with a 15-foot-square seat, built out of ten tons of steel.

The county seat was moved to Anniston after years of controversy and a State Supreme Court ruling in June 1900.

The Treaty of Cusseta was an agreement between the U.S. government and the Creek Nation in which the Creeks ceded the remainder of their land east of the Mississippi River, all of which was located in east Alabama.

In 1917, at the start of World War I, the United States Army established a training camp at Fort McClellan.

John Pelham was the third of seven children, with five brothers and a sister Betty, born to Dr. Atkinson and Martha Pelham at his grandparents’ home along Cane Creek near Alexandria, Alabama. He grew up on the family’s 1,000-acre plantation.

The Chief Ladiga Trail is Alabama’s premiere rails-to-trails project. It wanders 33 miles through the countryside of Calhoun and Cleburne counties. In 2008 the “Chief” was connected to Georgia’s Silver Comet Trail completing what is now considered to be the longest paved pedestrian pathway in America. Together the trails are 95 miles long with plans for future extensions and spurs.

More than 100 years ago, Cider Ridge was originally home to the Melon Apple Orchard. This orchard grew up to 11,000 bushels of apples annually on the property, and at its peak, produced more than 20,000 gallons of apple cider a year.

Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar. After Segar’s death in 1938, many different artists were hired to draw the strip. Tom Sims, the son of a Coosa River channel-boat captain, continued writing Thimble Theatre strips and established the Popeye the Sailorman spin-off.

Jacksonville State‘s first football team was fielded in 1904. Jacksonville State University’s first football team, the Eagle Owls, was formed in the late 19th century. Before the start of the 1947 season, not only did the team change their colors from blue and gold to red and white but the mascot changed to the Fighting Gamecocks. The Gamecocks were defeated in their first three championship game appearances, losing 33–0 to Lehigh in 1977, 3–0 to Mississippi College in 1989 (later vacated), and 23–6 to Pittsburg State in 1991. The next year, the Gamecocks defeated Pittsburg State 17–13 in 1992.