
Pronounced "HAIR-uh-kin" Creek by older residents, the waterway often produces a roaring sound like a hurricane as it rushes over its rocky bed. It flows from the confluence of Davis and Coal Creeks in the town of Vance and runs west for approximately 26 to 28 miles. The creek also meanders through the communities of Brookwood, Vance, Peterson, Coaling, Cottondale, and Holt, where it enters the Black Warrior River.
Hurricane Creek's banks are bordered by a wide variety of trees—including birch, beech, oaks, poplars, sycamores and southern longleaf pines—that form a tall canopy. Understory trees include dogwoods, redbuds, and hollies. Stands of big-leaf magnolia, known locally as "cowcumbers," can be found in most every plot of woods along the creek course, producing large white flowers in late spring. Some of the cedars that line the creek are so massive that they may be several hundred years old.

Wildlife at Hurricane Creek is typical of most Appalachian woodlands: deer, possums, canecutter rabbits (also known as swamp rabbits), squirrels, groundhogs, and snakes. Turtles sun themselves on tree limbs stretching out into the creek. Fresh animal tracks are often visible on the creek's myriad sandbars, and many creek enthusiasts have reported sightings of bobcats and coyotes. The creek habitat is also visited by red-tailed hawks, ospreys, pileated woodpeckers, wood ducks, great blue herons, and Alabama's state bird, the brightly colored woodpecker known as the yellowhammer, or northern flicker. Eagles have been sighted near the creek mouth.

Archaeological evidence indicates that Native Americans inhabited the creek watershed from about 10,000 B.C. Some land adjacent to the creek was part of a trail known as the Bear Meat Path, used by regional Indian groups in their travels from north Alabama into present-day Tuscaloosa County. In 1847-48, University of Alabama geologist Michael Tuomey made the first geological survey of the state of Alabama and discovered high-grade coal along the banks of Hurricane Creek. His findings led to development of the Warrior Coal Basin, a rich vein of coal that underlies the creek. Less than a half-century later, geological reports about the area's coal caught the attention of geologists across this country and in Europe, many of whom came to study the basin.
Roland Harper, a botanist and geographer with the Geological Survey of Alabama during much of the first half of the twentieth century, consistently studied the natural habitat of Hurricane Creek and recorded his findings in diaries now housed at the W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library at the University of Alabama. He was among the first to describe a low white native azalea that is now known as the Alabama azalea (Rhododendron alabamense Rheder). This rare species grows profusely up and down the creek, displaying its snowy white flowers, each with a prominent yellow blotch and a lemony fragrance. In addition, the rare silky camellia (Stewartia malacodendron L.), a small tree or shrub also found at the creek by Harper, continues to bloom in the area's moist woods, each flower projecting purple filaments from the center of five petals.

In the mid-1990s, a group of concerned citizens organized the non-profit Friends of Hurricane Creek, affiliated with the international Waterkeeper Alliance, to advocate for the protection and preservation of the creek and its surrounding habitats. The organization, which now numbers 180 members, holds annual creek clean-up events and has pioneered a procedure for citizen's to file complaints about threats to the creek and engages in grassroots campaigns to protect the creek and its ecology and pursues legal action to end pollution.

In July 2008, the Tuscaloosa County Commission purchased a 249-acre wilderness area called the M Bend, which more than three miles of creek frontage on the waterway's north side. The family of the late Stanley Park Sr. sold it to the Trust for Public Land, which held it until purchase by the Tuscaloosa County Park and Recreation Authority. It is now known as Hurricane Creek Park.
Additional Resources
Callahan, Nancy. Hurricane Creek: Personal Accounts & Collected Lore. New York: Crescent Ridge Publishing, 2019.
Additional Resources
Callahan, Nancy. Hurricane Creek: Personal Accounts & Collected Lore. New York: Crescent Ridge Publishing, 2019.