Melancholy Journey
Speaker: Billy Clark
In our area of east Alabama and west Georgia, most people who have an interest in The Battle of West Point and Fort Tyler know where the fort is located. The speaker will explain the Confederate defensive positions which surrounded West Point on the west side of the Chattahoochee River.
He began his research with the only known existing map of this historic West Point event seeking to discover exactly where the Confederate defensive perimeter was located as it applied to present day. An entire year was spent studying all types of modern and historical maps, reading old letters from soldiers, diaries, military reports and many days of inclement weather walking the back lots and neighborhoods of West Point and Lanett.
The most intriguing part of the research came with a discovery of a rare 1942 aerial photograph of West Point. This amazing image actually shows ghost images of Confederate fortifications still visible in 1942, only 77 years after the battle. A Confederate Redoubt half again as big as Fort Tyler itself is visible in the photograph. This Redoubt was located in the present day parking lot of the Cherry Valley Shopping Center and guarded the Opelika Road “Cherry Drive” as it entered West Point from the west. The culmination of all this research is a wonderful and melancholy peek into the past.
Billy Clark is a veteran of The US Coast Guard, a 1984 graduate of Auburn University and is Senior Colorist in the Custom Design Department at Interface Flooring in LaGrange, GA. He is married to the former Jenny Syler of West Point and has two daughters. Billy is a member of the Fort Tyler Association and has always been fascinated with The War Between the States, especially the influence this conflict had on the people in and around West Point, GA.
