Profile: Colony awarded funding for road projects, residents celebrate 'Colony Day'

Benjamin Bullard, The Cullman Times, Ala.
·2 min read

Mar. 25—After watching community spirit wither on the vine for years at Cullman County's smallest municipality, local leaders at Colony decided in 2021 that it was finally time to do something about it. Their efforts paid off, because the homecoming event they created returned even stronger for 2022.

Putting out the call across social media to reach anyone with present and past ties to the hilltop town in the county's southwestern corner, Colony held its second annual Colony Day celebration in August. Conceived in the 1980s and recently revived as a way to rekindle the unique community's local pride of place, Colony Day brought out residents and guests for a weekend of barbecue, vintage vehicles, and a little friendly competition via an intentionally low-stakes dominoes and spades tournament.

"The community was just withering away, there wasn't any excitement so I wanted to bring something back," local council member Jasmine Cole told the Times last year as people enjoyed Vivian Allen Park on a sunny summer Saturday. "Everybody was excited to come back home. Everyone from the elders to the kids loved it."

In October, the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs announced that Colony had been awarded a federal Community Development Block Grant through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's CDBG Small City Fund program.

The funds will be used to rehabilitate portions of paving and ditching along roads and street. Colony was awarded $399,827 for its project and must provide a local match of $20,000 to qualify for the money.

Nestled off the beaten path just a short drive off Alabama Highway 91, the county's tiniest town has unique local beginnings: Before anyone envisioned incorporating the community into a municipality, it was a land grant farming community devoted to compensating African American families during the Reconstruction period.

That makes Colony among the oldest in Cullman County, and those early days saw the growth of a local economy that had farming as its focus. Schools — often the heartbeat of any small community — were built in the early and mid-1900s to accommodate a rising population. The county school system's 1960s consolidation of students into the Hanceville school system, though, shuttered Colony's local schools for good.

Events such as Colony Day help remind those connected to Colony that the town still keeps a unique sense of place, and local leaders hope to make the most of each new opportunity.