City History
Union Springs, ca. 1905 Originally Creek Indian territory, the rich land of Bullock County made Union Springs an important center of the antebellum cotton trade beginning in the 1830s. With no access to river transport, Union Springs conducted its trade with the market in Columbus, Georgia, via the Mobile and Girard Railway Company. During the antebellum period, cotton barons built many striking mansions along the Chunnenuggee ridge, including the 1843 Moorish Revival style Foster-Chapman House, childhood home to civil rights activist Virginia Foster Durr. Although these homes and much of the town were spared generally from the destruction of the Civil War, the impact of Reconstruction and Emancipation led to a period of post-war economic decline.
By 1885, Union Springs had rebounded from the aftermath of the Civil War. The town was by then a junction of the Mobile and Girard and the Montgomery and Eufaula Railroads. It was home to an oil mill, a planing mill, and professional offices for doctors and lawyers. Cotton mills soon followed and again made Union Springs an economic hub for the surrounding counties. The growth of commerce in Union Springs enriched many of its citizens and led to more mansions being built around the town. These buildings and their antebellum predecessors now form the core of Union Springs’s popular Historic District.
Josephine Hotel Beginning in the early twentieth century, land originally used for cotton farming in Bullock County began to give way to other uses, particularly hunting. By the 1920s, game preserves occupied many of the sites of former cotton plantations. During that period, Lewis B. Maytag, an avid hunter and originator of the Maytag line of appliances, created a 14,000-acre hunting preserve known as the Sedgefields Plantation. This preserve and the lands surrounding it became a very popular location for bird dog field trials, which continue today. Field trials judge a bird dog’s ability to successfully point out the hiding places of game birds. From its founding through the present day, the economy of Union Springs has remained tied to agriculture. Bonnie Plant Farms, the nation’s largest grower of container vegetables and herbs, was founded in Union Springs and now has facilities in all 50 states.