Hank's Lost Highway

US 31 from Montgomery to the Bay

Drive: Montgomery → Mobile
Distance: ~170 miles
Time: 1 days
Highways: US 31
Avoids: I-65
Region: Deep South

US 31 runs in I-65's literal shadow, which means it carries everything the interstate threw away: pecan stands, courthouse towns, and the boyhood geography of Hank Williams, who learned guitar from a Black street musician in Georgiana and died at 29 in the back of a baby-blue Cadillac. Play the records in order as you drive; the road wrote them.

📍 Alabama's Hank Williams Trail markers run the corridor; Butler County lays them on proudly.

The drive, segment by segment

Hank's Home Country

Montgomery → Georgiana · ~60 mi

From the museum with the death Cadillac, past Priester's pecans, to the boyhood home where Tee Tot taught the boy who taught everybody else.

🎸Hank Williams Museum — Montgomery
The 1952 baby-blue Cadillac he died in on New Year's Day 1953, age 29. His grave (and Audrey's) is up at Oakwood Annex — fans leave guitar picks and miniature bottles; the statue downtown gets serenaded at 2 a.m.
🍽️Chris' Hot Dogs — Montgomery
Since 1917: Hank's regular stool, sauce-soaked dogs, governors at the counter. Order two with sauerkraut and consider history.
🍽️Priester's Pecans — Fort Deposit
Pecan log rolls and roadside candy since 1935 — the classic lower-Alabama pit stop, watching the candy kitchen work.

The Lonesome Stretch

Georgiana → Brewton · ~55 mi

Conecuh County: sausage smoke, Bigfoot proclamations, and the long pine miles that put the lonesome in the whippoorwill.

🎸Hank's Boyhood Home — Georgiana
The clapboard house where young Hiram Williams shined shoes and learned guitar from Rufus 'Tee Tot' Payne, the Black street musician he credited his whole life. Festival each June; the volunteers' stories are the exhibit.
🛸Bigfoot Capital of Alabama — Evergreen
Self-proclaimed by official 2019 proclamation after a run of sightings; the water tower leans in. Also the gateway to Conecuh sausage — buy a cooler's worth.

Down to the Bay

Brewton → Mobile · ~55 mi

Old timber towns easing down to the Tensaw delta and Mobile — where this route hands off to the Old Spanish Trail.

🏘️Brewton — Brewton
Old timber-baron mansions on 'millionaires' row' and a blueberry festival each June — the prettiest courthouse town on the corridor.

Worth a detour

Spectre (Big Fish set) — North of Montgomery on Jackson Lake Island: the abandoned, sweetly decaying town Tim Burton built for Big Fish (2003) — resident goats included. Small fee, big mood.
Monroeville — Forty minutes west: Harper Lee's and Truman Capote's hometown — the To Kill a Mockingbird courthouse stages the play every spring.
Boll Weevil Monument — Enterprise, 70 miles east: the only monument on Earth thanking an agricultural pest — the weevil forced the pivot to peanuts, and prosperity followed.