Beyond Auburn Magazine

Auburn University’s Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities, CMDCAH, is celebrating the explorations and discoveries of naturalist William Bartram with “Bartram and Alabama: A Traveling Exhibit.” Traveling throughout Alabama towns and state parks, the exhibit highlights the most notable natural encounters of the 18th century—with some made right here in Alabama.

William Bartram’s 18th‑century journeys carried him across thousands of miles in the Southern territories of early America, with his most influential observations recorded in present‑day Alabama. Throughout his travels, he documented hundreds of plants and animals across the region; remarkably, 130 of his findings were unknown to science at the time. From 1775 to 1778, Bartram traversed what would become Alabama, identifying previously unrecorded flora and creating essential firsthand accounts of Creek towns such as Coweta, Yuchi and Apalachicola.

CMDCAH’s exhibit is leaving a path of history and honor at each location. Being able to celebrate the rich history and importance of the land that citizens of Alabama call home, and its abundance of natural wonders and Native history, is a significant message of the exhibit. More importantly, it also promotes an understanding of how much has been lost to time and human intervention. From January 6th to February 15th of this year, Landmarks of DeKalb County in Fort Payne hosted the exhibit, and left a meaningful impact on the community:

"Landmarks of DeKalb County is grateful for the opportunity to host the William Bartram and Alabama traveling exhibit as it educates on the importance of documenting the flora and fauna of our beautiful state before more is lost to development, that results in endangerment or extinction,” said Jessica Harper-Brown, executive director of Landmarks of DeKalb County, Inc. “Bartram's contributions also gave us a glimpse of the once thriving Creek Nation before being decimated by treaties and the Removal. We owe him a great debt for his work that is still relevant to today."

The exhibit allows visitors to experience the true significance of Bartram’s Alabama discoveries and view never-before-seen historical materials and information. CMDCAH director Mark Wilson described the exhibit’s value in an interview with Carolyn Hutcheson at Troy Public Radio: “Each panel gives viewers wonderful text written by Dr. Kathryn Holland Braund, who is a Bartram scholar retired from Auburn University's history department. It gives photographs of important images, some not been seen very often by the public, drawings of Creek Indian villages, as well as a timeline of his time in what would become Alabama,” Wilson stated. “People can get a sense of who Bartram was and what life was like when he was here.”

The full interview with Wilson is published through the Troy University Podcast Network’s “In Focus with Carolyn Hutchenson,” and is available for streaming on all major podcast platforms.