Long before European settlers arrived on the Gulf Coast, Native American tribes living along the Fort Morgan Peninsula found an ingenious way to shorten one of their toughest journeys. Rather than paddle a dugout canoe around the peninsula through open Gulf waters, they dug a canal, a half-mile-long channel connecting Oyster Bay to Little Lagoon that offered a direct, safer route between Mobile Bay and the Gulf.
Dr. Greg Waselkov, professor emeritus at the University of South Alabama, led the excavation of the canal, now estimated to be roughly 1,400 years old. He will present his findings in a public talk, “An Ancient Canoe Canal in Gulf Shores, Alabama,” Thursday, Feb. 7, at 6 p.m. at the USA Marx Library in Mobile. The event, free and open to the public, was moved from the Archaeology Museum after drawing more interest than that venue could accommodate.
“We know ancient Native Americans had extensive trade and travel routes around the continent,” Waselkov said. Canals like the one in Gulf Shores were part of that larger network, built to save time and reduce risk for people relying on dugout canoes to move goods and people along the coast.
“This canal would have saved many hours of paddling for those wishing to go from Mobile Bay to the Pensacola or Biloxi areas and beyond,” Waselkov said. “And it would have made for much safer travel in the back bays, by avoiding the open waters of the Gulf. This was one exceptional piece of a very large transportation system of great antiquity.”
At its peak, the canal ran about 30 feet wide and six to eight feet deep. Centuries of shifting sand have erased most of it, but two roughly 400-foot sections remain well preserved. “There are two well-preserved sections of the Gulf Shores canal, each about 400 feet long,” Waselkov said. “The southernmost section is the canal’s southern terminus where it entered Little Lagoon, and this part is owned by the city of Gulf Shores, so its preservation seems assured. This may be the westernmost ancient canoe canal yet identified in the Southeast. The city of Gulf Shores plans to highlight a preserved section of the canal in a heritage trail.”
Long before archaeologists took an interest, locals already knew the feature existed. “People living in the area of Fort Morgan Peninsula have always known about the feature and have long attributed it to ancient Native Americans,” Waselkov said. “It was known as the ‘Indian ditch’ in the 20th century.” Longtime Gulf Shores resident Harry King first urged Waselkov to investigate the site, and in February 2017 the team began small-scale excavations with volunteers at the canal and an adjacent shell midden, following up with a full cross-section excavation last fall.
Finds like this are exceedingly rare along the Gulf Coast, where erosion and development have erased most physical traces of pre-contact Native American engineering. “The only other similarly well-preserved portion of an ancient dugout canoe canal is in Everglades National Park, so the existence of one in our own backyard is pretty extraordinary,” Waselkov said.
Gulf Shores officials have said they intend to incorporate the preserved canal section into a planned heritage trail, giving residents and visitors a rare, accessible look at nearly 1,400 years of South Alabama history.