The Ride
Preservation
Give Thanks
Help Us
Contact
Ryan Darnell, a longtime veteran of the Guntersville Police Department whose most recent post was assistant chief, has been selected to be Guntersville’s new police chief.
Chief Darnell has been in law enforcement for 28 years, beginning as a reserve officer with the Douglas Police Department. After graduating from the academy, he went to Fort Payne. He has been with Guntersville for the last 26 years.
Mayor Leigh Dollar noted he is the first chief in decades to have come up through the ranks at Guntersville.
He began as a patrolman, became a lieutenant in 2002, then a captain in 2005. In 2017, he was named the operations captain over patrol and then he was named deputy police chief in 2020.
Chief Darnell is 51. His wife Amanda is an ESL teacher at JB Pennington School in Blountsville. They have two children, a son, Zachary, who attends UAH, and a daughter who is a senior at JB Pennington.
During the Trail of Tears, several groups of Native Americans passed through the area that is now Lake Guntersville State Park. Each September, the park commemorates the Trail of Tears with a day of historic walks, displays of Native-American artifacts, ritual dances, and stories. Camping is also available in the park.
Historic marker in Dekalb County refers to ‘Gunter’s landing’ and Gurley, Alabama as waypoints on the Trail of Tears.
The first detachment of 1,103 Cherokees to emigrate under their own officers, prior to leaving for the west held a final council at Rattlesnake Springs (near present-day Charleston, TN) and, by unanimous vote, declared their intentions to continue their old constitution and laws upon arrival in the west. John Benge, an officer of this first detachment was a descendant of red-haired Chief Bench, who had fought for Cherokee freedom in the eighteenth century. Benge's assistant was George Lowrey, referred to by admiring whites as "the Cherokees' George Washington." John Burnett, a private in Captain McClellan's company and eyewitness to the Cherokees' forced removal west by the United States Government, Burnett recalled its horrors: "I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven by bayonet into the stockades" now present-day Fort Payne. On October 3, 1838 Cherokee leader John Benge left Fort Payne, they followed what is now Highway 35 through Fort Payne to the top of Sand Mountain. Turning southwest at present-day Rainsville, they followed Highway 75 to Albertsville, then U.S. Highway 431 to Gunters Landing (now Guntersville). They were ferried across the Tennessee River, then proceeding north to present-day Gurley before heading northwest along the Flint River, into Tennessee and the west. Many died of hypothermia and starvation at the Three Forks of the Flint River. Over 4,000 Cherokee Indians died on this forced removal known as the Trail of Tears, however many ancestors of American Indians reside in Alabama today.
To learn more about Guntersville tourism click here.