Courtesy of Roland Harper Collection at the University of Alabama W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library
Canebrake
Canebrakes are areas of land overgrown with cane. Large portions of the flood plains and valleys in what is now Alabama were covered in canebrakes until the early nineteenth century, when settlers streamed in from the east and cleared them out to convert the fertile soil in which the cane grew into cotton and corn fields.