Wysers Bluff

Tuscaloosa is a ghost town in Walker County that was twelve miles north of Huntsville on the Trinity River near the home of Samuel Calhoun. The area was included in the Jonathan S. Collard Survey of 369 acres. In 1853 Gustavas A. Wyser acquired one-half of the property on the big bend of the Trinity River. A community was settled by people fleeing the 1853 yellow fever epidemic in the river town of Cincinnati. It was first called Wyser's Bluff and later Osceola for John C. Calhoun's plantation in South Carolina. It was renamed Tuscaloosa in honor of the Alabama hometown from which many of the citizens had come. The community had a post office from 1858 to 1869. The site had a natural landing for steamboats, and the community became the principle port for Walker County. It was a busy commercial center until the railroad arrived. At one time the Trinity Mining and Development Company organized operations to mine lignite, but it was of poor quality, and the company abandoned the project. Many residents moved to nearby Riverside, at the junction of the railroad and river, when it was founded in the 1870s.