Biohazard Cleanup Near Fruithurst Historic District Fruithurst, AL

Fruithurst is an incorporated town in east-central Cleburne County in northeastern Alabama, close to the Georgia state line.

The settlement began in the 1880s after the Southern Railway laid a line through Cleburne County; it was first called Summit Cut, for the heavy grading the railroad required, and then Zidonia, a name derived from the biblical city of Sidon.

Fruithurst's early history is unusual in Alabama: it was an agricultural experiment run by the Alabama Fruit Growers and Winery Association, organized in 1894 by Northern investors led by E. B. Hammitt of Springfield, Massachusetts, to build a center of grape-growing and winemaking.

The town's citizens chose the name Fruithurst in a naming contest held by the promoters, who awarded a $25 prize for the winning name.

Fruithurst incorporated in 1896, at the height of its vineyard-colony boom.

By 1898 more than 3,000 acres of grapevines were under cultivation around Fruithurst, and the town produced some 23,000 gallons of wine that year; it also became known for cabbages and sweet potatoes.

In the mid-1890s the association spent $40,000 to build the Fruithurst Inn, an 80-room hotel with a restaurant, billiard room, and bowling alley.

The Fruithurst Winery, a legacy of the 1890s wine colony, is still operating in the town today.

Fruithurst once had a reputation as a notorious speed trap on U.S. Highway 78, and in 1975 Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley set up an office in town and personally pledged to provide criminal defense to anyone arrested or cited there.

The 2020 census counted 235 people in Fruithurst, down from 284 in 2010; at the 2000 census the town had 270 residents in 107 households.