POWERGRAMS

14 beds. Demopolis is the gateway to the Black Warrior-Tombigbee Waterway, with its 10,000-acre namesake lake full of bass, crappie, bream and catfish. Eagles, wood ducks and other birds fly overhead, float downstream toward the lock and dam or rest in huge oak and pine trees lining the riverbanks. Boaters from Memphis to Mobile dock at the Demopolis Yacht Basin and the Kingfisher Bay Marina. Foscue Creek Campground has 54 campsites with picnic tables and grills, a nature trail and a boat ramp that are popular with vacationers. Residents are proud of their small town with big city amenities: a municipal golf course, airport and library, college classes, an active arts council and the Canebreak amateur theater group. They boast of the Demopolis City Schools Foundation that began in 1993 with a donation from the Alabama Power Foundation. It has placed more than $1 million into local classrooms and now has a $1 million endowment. "Demopolis is Greek for 'City of the People' and I think that's very telling," says Ashley Coplin of the Demopolis Area Chamber of Commerce. "The people here are so caring and have such great character. The world is kind of crazy around us sometimes but we always pitch in to help one another and to boost our town." WATCHING THE RIVER FLOATS A visiting child would easily be awed by the colorful, much larger than life animals, buildings and other paper and wood figures rising in a nondescript warehouse near the northern city limits. There's a giant green and blue peacock that nearly touches the 25-foot-high ceiling. Nearby are 10-foot-tall lollipops, candy canes, toy soldiers and drummer boys. A miniature version of the historic red- walled St. Andrews Church is on a flatbed trailer, and a huge wooden railroad engine is being hammered together just across from Santa's sleigh being pulled high into the sky by his reindeer. Scurrying around all these creations are high school students and retirees — just part of the huge crew of volunteers that each year builds the wheeled floats for the children's day parade. These and other workers labor in another warehouse nearby getting boats ready for the nighttime water parade that last year celebrated 45 consecutive annual Christmas on the River shows. "It takes people of all ages, from local third-graders to University of West Alabama students to a large segment of the retirement community, some of them having worked on it for many years," says Diane Brooker, manager of the Alabama Power Demopolis Office since 2008 and a past chairman of COTR and its street parade. "The people and businesses in Demopolis are so giving of their time, talent and resources." Some floats are built by employees of the sponsoring businesses but most are constructed entirely by volunteers. Organizations like the Alabama Power Foundation provide donations each year for materials that help bring to life Demopolis' biggest one-day attraction, which brings tourists from across the South for events highlighted by the state championship barbecue cook-off. The night flotilla of glimmering boats followed by fireworks on the Tombigbee River the first Saturday each December has been featured on national television shows, and tops off a week of holiday festivities across the community. "We have 20,000 to 30,000 visitors for Christmas on the River every year," says Coplin. "And our volunteers number in the hundreds." FROM DOGTROT DAYS TO A DYNASTY Gaineswood is perhaps the mother of all Alabama mansions, having risen from a dogtrot house built in 1820 by U.S. Indian agent Gen. George Strother Gaines, to the National Historic Landmark it became through six additions over the next four decades under the guidance of Nathan Bryan Whitfield. Settlers' cabin behind Bluff Hall Gaineswood is considered one of America's top three Greek Revival houses. Christmas on the River

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