Clearing land exposes previously unseen view of New Albany

A new view of a large part of New Albany, never before seen by human eyes, has emerged within the last week.

The photo above, shot shortly after 9 p.m. Saturday night, January 28, shows a scene of sparkling lights, a scene nobody could possibly have seen until last week. It shows a large portion of New Albany, west of the Tallahatchie River, with a some of the downtown vaguely visible in the background.

Same view from the ridge, now cleared of brush, looking east during the daytime.

Workmen with heavy equipment cleared an area of considerable growth of brush and small trees, thus creating the view of New Albany. Boundaries of the area are Fairfield Drive on the east, Oxford Road on the north and Chickasaw Drive on the west. A ridge, perhaps 40 feet high, rises sharply on the Chickasaw Drive side of the property, and overlooks Tallahatchie River bottom land to the east.

The ridge, of course, has been there for a long time, as has the river bottom. However, the stand of brush and immature trees on the ridge hid the land below from view.

This photo, looking approximately north from the intersection of LEE DRIVE and NOT A CITY ST., shows land cleared for the new IMPC building

A resident of a nearby home said the bottom land visible from the ridge 60 years ago disappeared from view as the vegetation grew heavier over the decades.

Sixty years ago, relatively few of the current buildings stood on the west side of the river, across from downtown New Albany. That land has experienced a great deal of commercial development. It now has many buildings, many tens of thousands of square feet, that were not there to be seen back when the land was last visible from the ridge.

This official City of New Albany street sign is on the east side of Fairfield Drive and was the vantage point for one of our photos. No, we have no idea why the city went to the expense of putting up a sign to deny that “NOT A CITY ST” is part of its ground transportation network.

The result is a view that no human being had seen until a few days ago.

Clearing the land makes room for, among other things, the new Internal Medicine and Pediatric Clinic (IMPC).

Take a drive down Oxford Drive from Baptist Hospital to West Bankhead some night and enjoy the view. It’s a pretty good sight in the daytime, too, but not as striking as after dark.

Certainly, it is not as dramatic as the view from Muhlholland Drive in the Santa Monica Mountains, overlooking Los Angeles, but it’s actually pretty impressive if you have not yet seen it.