Founded in 1818 by John Coffee, Robert Beaty, John D. Carroll, and John Read, Athens is one of the oldest incorporated cities in the state, having been incorporated one year prior to the state's
admittance to the Union in 1819. Limestone County was also created by an act of the
Alabama Territorial Legislature in 1818. The town was first called Athenson, but was incorporated as Athens after the
ancient city in Greece. The town's first mayor was Samuel Tanner, and the
Tanner area, south of Athens, was named on his behalf. The Athens area was the home of
William Wyatt Bibb, the first governor of Alabama, and its second governor, his brother
Thomas Bibb, who succeeded him in office when he died in a fall from his horse. Before European settlers arrived, the area which would become Athens was part of Chickasaw lands, settlers from Tennessee began intruding into what would become Limestone County in the first decade of the 1800s; the Chickasaw ceded lands north and east of the Tennessee River by about 1816, opening legal settlement in the area. Encyclopedia of Alabama In 1818, a group of land speculators, including Robert Beaty and John D. Carroll, purchased 160 acres and began selling lots in what would become the city of Athens. The city was incorporated on November 19, 1818 — notably before Alabama even became a state (December 14, 1819). On March 22, 1819, the city was chosen as the county seat for the newly formed Limestone County. Cotton and agriculture dominated the economy in these early years. Due to the fertile soil of the Tennessee Valley region, it drew settlers who believed the land would sustain crops and prosperity. .(WPA photo 1930s) In 1822, local residents purchased of land and constructed a building to house the Athens Female Academy. The school became affiliated with the Methodist church in 1842, and was eventually renamed Athens Female College. After becoming coeducational in 1932, the school changed its name again to Athens College. After being taken over by the State of Alabama in 1974, the college was converted to a "reverse junior college", offering the last two years of instruction for graduates of area community colleges. It is today known as
Athens State University. Many homes in the central part of modern Athens date to the antebellum period, and are part of historic preservation districts. On May 2, 1862, during the
Civil War, Athens was seized by Union forces under the command of Col.
John Basil Turchin. After occupying the town on May 2, 1862, Turchin assembled his men and reportedly said, "I shut my eyes for two hours. I see nothing". He did, in fact, leave the town to reconnoiter defensive positions, during which time his men ransacked the town. Turchin was later court-martialed over his treatment of Athens. The incident was controversial, and
Lost Cause supporters vilified Turchin. Athens was the home of Governor
George S. Houston, Alabama's first post-Reconstruction Democratic governor, who served from 1874 through 1878. Houston was noted for reducing the debts incurred to benefit private railroad speculators and others by his Reconstruction Republican predecessors. During Reconstruction, Athens was the home of the Trinity School, a school founded for the children of former slaves by
Mary Fletcher Wells and funded by the
American Missionary Association. Athens was traditionally a
cotton and
railroad town, but since the local
aerospace boom of the 1950s and 1960s, it has increasingly entered the orbit of nearby industry center
Huntsville as the area's cotton production has steadily declined. Athens is the home of
Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant, a Tennessee Valley Authority installation first operated in 1974, that was once the world's largest
nuclear plant. It provides many jobs to the area and most of the electricity for the
Huntsville-Decatur Metro Area. On March 22, 1975, the Browns Ferry plant became the scene of what was, with the exception of the
Three Mile Island accident, the most serious
nuclear accident in United States history. A worker using a candle to check for air leaks started a fire among control wires, causing a temporary threat to operational control of the reactor (see
Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant article on Unit One Fire). On December 28, 2024,
a high-end EF1 tornado struck downtown Athens causing significant damage to the Limestone Courthouse square and caused roof damage to many businesses in downtown Athens and several trees were uprooted including one outside the courthouse. ==Geography==