Luverne

History

Luverne was one of numerous towns developed in the state as a result of railroad construction. On July 2, 1880, the Montgomery and Southern Railway was created to construct a new railroad linking Montgomery to the Florida coast. The company completed around of narrow gauge track by September 18, 1882. The company was reorganized as the Montgomery and Florida Railway in May 1886, and a second time as the Northwest and Florida Railroad in 1888. In November 1888, the railroad reached the site of Luverne in the central part of Crenshaw County, near the Patsaliga River. Now totaling , the line was converted to standard gauge by July 1889, and it was decided to proceed no further. The Alabama Terminal and Improvement Company, a subsidiary of the Alabama Midland Railway, controlled the railroad by 1889, and the line from Montgomery to Luverne was into the network of the latter. The new railroad terminus attracted related development, and the town grew. It was incorporated in 1891 and became a center of timbering in the Piney Woods of southern Alabama, as the land was not fertile enough for large-scale cotton plantation agriculture. In 1893, the citizens of Crenshaw County voted to move the county seat from Rutledge to the more populous Luverne. On June 22, 1940, an African-American man named Jesse Thornton was lynched in Luverne for failing to address a white man with the title of "Mister". He was fatally shot, and his body was later found in the Patsaliga River. The Equal Justice Initiative documented that the white man Thornton had offended by his Jim Crow infraction was a police officer. This was the only lynching recorded in the county.

Geography

Luverne is located at . The town of Rutledge lies along Luverne's western border. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 0.17%, is water. According to the Köppen climate classification, Luverne has a humid subtropical climate (abbreviated Cfa).

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  67
• Northern Cardinal

  Cardinalis cardinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  67
• Northern Mockingbird

  Mimus polyglottos (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  67
• Eastern Bluebird

  Sialia sialis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  53
• Turkey Vulture

  Cathartes aura (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  52
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  50
• Red-winged Blackbird

  Agelaius phoeniceus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  48
• Red-bellied Woodpecker

  Melanerpes carolinus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  44