Many visitors to Orange Beach may have wondered about the origins of Catman Road, a trail which runs through Alabama Gulf State Park as part of the Hugh S. Branyon Backcountry Trail.
Legend has it that on the eve of a big cat hunt, a local medicine man would give Native Americans of his tribe drops of a serum that would give them great strength and stamina. The story goes that one young warrior snuck into the medicine man’s hut and drank an entire bottle of this potion. He was last seen running into the woods with a pack of wild cats.
Another story suggests that the Catman was actually a child who disappeared during the Hurricane of 1906 and was raised in the wild.
Local lore also asserts that the Catman was a victim of the Great Depression. After the crash in 1929 it is said that three hermits decided to live on the land in Gulf State Park. Several years later a man was fishing on the beach when he noticed a man approaching him from the distance. He thought nothing of it and went back to his fishing when suddenly he was attacked from behind. The man smelled like a wild beast, and his long fingernails scarred the fisherman. Fortunately, a Jeep was driving in the direction of the altercation, and the man quickly escaped, leaving the fisherman alive to tell the tale of the Catman. After the attack, a search was made across the island. Two shallow graves were discovered in Gulf State Park, and it was believed to be the other hermits.
According to historian Margaret Childress Long, the story of Catman gained more traction in the late 1950s, thanks to a prank pulled by her brother, Foster Childress and his friends Mike Micelli and James Huff. At the time it was common for girls to visit the area from Mobile, and the boys had decided that they would take some of these girls on a ride through the state park on Catman Road. When Micelli saw the lights of their car he was to jump out of the woods and scare the girls, wearing a crude cat costume. The stage was set, but the boys did not know another car was ahead of them on the road. Micelli saw headlights and jumped out of the wilderness on cue, to which the other car quickly sped away. On Monday, the school in Foley was abuzz with stories of the Catman.
The legend persisted, and other students attempted a similar prank themselves. In the early 1960s Lewis Bennet, a lifeguard with the City of Gulf Shores, donned a cat costume to scare some girls with his friends, one of whom was Tem Blalock. According to Blalock, the plan was to use logs to block the road, while Bennet hid in a tree. When the boys exited the car to move the logs, Bennet jumped from the tree, he then grabbed one girl and carried her 20 feet before stalking back into the wilderness. Several hours later, the boys returned for Bennet and jokingly said to him, “We started to leave you out there just to meet the real one.”
However, Blalock asserts that later he actually saw the real Catman. The sighting happened one summer evening as Blalock was driving down on what is now Catman Road trail on the way back from the A&W Rootbeer stand where he worked in Gulf Shores. As the car passed two lake cabins, the headlights shined briefly on a figure who darted across the road and hid behind a tree. Blalock, who was with friends, exited the vehicle with a tire iron. While they did not get another glimpse of the Catman, they did hear the sound of someone wading in the lake behind the cabin.
The Catman Road trailhead can be found on Highway 161, across from Marina Road. Today the road is a paved 2.2-mile trail for walkers, bicyclists and joggers.”