Trailhead is not only making history as the first of its kind new home community in Huntsville — it’s preserving and uplifting it.

Long before electricity and cars, before such luxuries as refrigerators and air-conditioning, generations of Alabamians harnessed nature to create a good life on the northern slopes of Monte Sano Mountain.

Although the original farmhouse, summer kitchen, and other outbuildings are long gone, a rare nineteenth-century springhouse remains carefully preserved in the heart of Trailhead. Early settlers used local stones to build a nineteenth-century version of a refrigerator. Cool mountain water, collected in the stone spring house, helped preserve and protect food, drink, and even ice. Imagine a dark, cold room full of harvested crops, hanging meat, pails of milk, crocks of churned butter, and fresh eggs. For an isolated farm family this was their grocery store. This was also a popular place to cool off after a long day in the fields. The Trailhead Springhouse remains carefully preserved so future generations can enjoy a long sit by the cool mountain waters — just like those who came before them.

An old tree-lined wagon road that makes up the core of Trailhead’s Greenway is meant to take you back to another time, a time when people valued the contours of the land, a slower pace of life, and the beauty of nature. For many early settlers the long, winding road that led up to their homestead became a way to show off their hard work and a point of pride as travelers rode by. That same pride remains today, and it’s why we worked so hard to keep this historic byway. Twenty-first century residents of Trailhead, like those nineteenth-century travelers, can enjoy the same solitude of the cedars as they stroll, run, or ride down this quiet country lane. As you make your way around our greenway think about the generations of horse-drawn buggies and wagons that put their mark on the soil. Now it’s your turn to make some history and literally walk in the footsteps of those before you.