Croom's Bluff; a scenic outlook dedicated to Isaac Croom
Item
- Legacies Classification
- Memorial Type
- Memorial Context
- Memorialized Subject
- Title
- Background and Context
- Physical Description
- Date created, installed or dedicated
- Historical Period
- Location: Institution, City, State
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Memorial Place
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Space on Campus
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Croom, Isaac.
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Croom's Bluff; a scenic outlook dedicated to Isaac Croom
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A scenic outlook on the South Cumberland Plateau and "Domain" (or property) of the University of the South. University leadership dedicated it in 1859 in the name of Isaac Croom, a powerful planter in west central Alabama and a leader in scientific agricultural experimentation. In 1859 the University’s leaders named the bluff after him to express their appreciation for Croom’s pledge of $25,000 to endow a professorship of practical agriculture at the University.
Isaac Croom (1794-1863), an early and generous University benefactor, enslaved at least 136 people in Marengo and Greene counties in West Alabama in 1860s. Born in North Carolina, he was, like many of the major backers of the University, a graduate of that state’s university. He immigrated to Alabama in 1837 and emerged as a planter renowned for adapting science to agricultural production. He later founded and headed the state’s Agricultural Society and published on agricultural subjects. Croom’s $25,000 pledge to endow a chair of practical agriculture demonstrated the University founders’ determination to build a modern and science-based intellectual center that would practically fuel the expansion and prosperity of the South’s slavery-based agricultural economy.
Croom's Bluff was to have been part of a necklace of scenic spots and outlooks along the “Corso,” a broad carriage road that was to circumnavigate the mountaintop site for about 30 miles. The Corso was laid out in the original 1859 plan of the campus envisioned by engineer Charles Barney and John Henry Hopkins, Episcopal bishop of Vermont, landscape architect, and recognized apologist for slavery. The Corso never materialized, but in the 1970s it served as the outline for the campus Perimeter (hiking) Trail.
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Croom's Bluff is located on Sewanee's Perimeter Trail, on the northern edge of the University Domain.
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1859
Position: 1210 (62 views)