Noccalula Falls bronze statue (9 ft, Silvercruys 1969)

Beside a 90-foot waterfall in Gadsden, a nine-foot statue of a young woman stands poised to leap, a monument to a legend whose origins are uncertain.

Noccalula Falls Park is a 225-acre park in Etowah County, two miles from downtown Gadsden, known for its 90-foot cascade into Black Creek Gorge. The Encyclopedia of Alabama says the falls are thought to be named for a Cherokee princess, and that forms of the legend date to the late eighteenth century and may have a basis in real events at the Cherokee village of Turkey Town near present-day Gadsden. Its best-known telling is a poem published in the Gadsden Times in 1895 by Anne Mathilde Bilbro, in which Noccalula's father betrothed her to a rich chief although she loved a man from her own tribe. A 2024 local-history article notes that similar leaping-maiden tales are told at many sites across the United States.