Union Springs, Alabama

On our way to Eufaula and a couple of other places, we went through Union Springs.  In the middle of downtown is the Bullock County Courthouse which was built in 1871, in the Second Empire style:

Since Union Springs is the “Bird Dog Field Trial Capitol of the World“, they put up this monument in 1996:

There are different game preserves around Union Springs, but the most prominent one is Sedgefields plantation, which was developed by Lewis Maytag (Maytag appliances).  There’s a listing of some of the different plantations/hunting clubs here.

Here’s the post office:

Love these old boxes:

The Carnegie library:

All around town are these benches with a bird dog design:

…and this is the 1897 Pauly jail building:

It’s open now as a museum, and on the third floor there is a trap door that was used for hanging prisoners back in the early 1900s:

The website calls these turrets “witches’ hats”:

So that was downtown.  What’s **really** to see are the houses in Union Springs (plus I actually got an unplanned/unexpected and *very* interesting tour of one of the George Franklin Barber homes!) – I’ll put those up a little bit later.