Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area

Wilson Lake is the reservoir created by Wilson Dam as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The lake stretches from Wilson Dam to Wheeler Dam.

Wilson Dam is a dam on the Tennessee River between Lauderdale and Colbert counties in Alabama. Completed in 1924 by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, it impounds Wilson Lake, and is one of nine Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) dams on the Tennessee River. It was declared a National Historic Landmark on November 13, 1966, for its role as the first dam to come under the TVA's administration. The dam is named for Woodrow Wilson.

The Florence-Muscle Shoals Metropolitan Area, commonly known as The Shoals, is a metropolitan statistical area in northwestern Alabama including the cities of Florence, Muscle Shoals, Tuscumbia, and Sheffield, and the counties of Lauderdale and Colbert. The 2020 Census population for the Shoals is 148,779 and an additional 410,000 commute to the Shoals daily as the economic, social, and educational center of northwest Alabama. The Shoals has also been known as the Tri-Cities and the Quad-Cities by locals. The area is home to the University of North Alabama, located in Florence, and the birthplace of Helen Keller (Tuscumbia) and W.C. Handy (Florence). It is also home to a community college, Northwest Shoals Community College located in Muscle Shoals. Every summer the play "The Miracle Worker" is produced for the public to view on the original Keller homesite. The water pump at which Helen rediscovered language is used as a prop in the play. Other area attractions include the Wilson Dam, the Shoals Theater located in downtown Florence, and a Robert Trent Jones golf course. The Shoals is also noted for its rich music traditions and is sometimes referred to as the birthplace of the Blues because W.C. Handy is credited by many as the father of the Blues. Since the 1970s, 80s, and to some extent even today, The Shoals has been home to a thriving recording industry, particularly based on the sensational output of FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. In the FAME Studios, Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, Chips Moman, and Rick Hall made soul music including the hit song by Percy Sledge, "When a Man Loves a Woman". Rock groups and musicians including The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Julian Lennon, Bob Seger, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Cher, The Osmonds, Paul Anka, Etta James, Jimmy Cliff, The Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett, and Lynyrd Skynyrd have recorded there. During late July and early August, the area hosts the famed Handy Music and Helen Keller Festivals. Noted attorney, actor, former senator and presidential contender Fred Thompson was born in Sheffield, as was U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell.

Patton Island is an island in the Tennessee River in Lauderdale County, Alabama, in the United States.Patton Island was named for Robert M. Patton, the 20th Governor of Alabama.

The Florence Wagon Works was a wagon manufacturing plant in Florence, Alabama. The factory was founded on the banks of the Tennessee River in 1889 by A. D. Bellamy. By 1904 the works employed 175 and produced 15,000 wagons annually at its peak. As motorized trucks and tractors replaced horse-drawn wagons, the factory switched to production of lawn chairs, swings, and other furniture. It closed in 1941. The site is adjacent to Wilson Dam, and it owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The University of Alabama Department of Archeology surveyed the site in 1993. Portions of 17 buildings and structures remain, but only in ruins. The most intact structure is a wooden trestle that carried the Louisville and Nashville Railroad line over a creek. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

Northwest Alabama Regional Airport (IATA: MSL, ICAO: KMSL, FAA LID: MSL) is a public-use airport located one mile east of Muscle Shoals, in Colbert County, Alabama. It is owned by the counties of Colbert and Lauderdale. The airport is serviced by Contour Airlines, subsidized by the Essential Air Service program. Formerly, the airport operated as Muscle Shoals Auxiliary Field.

Muscle Shoals is the largest city in Colbert County, Alabama, United States. It is located on the left bank of the Tennessee River in the northern part of the state and, as of the 2010 census, its population was 13,146. The estimated population in 2019 was 14,575.Both the city and the Florence-Muscle Shoals Metropolitan Area (including four cities in Colbert and Lauderdale counties) are commonly called "the Shoals". Northwest Alabama Regional Airport serves the Shoals region, located in the northwest section of the state. Due to its strategic location along the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals had long been territory of Native American tribes. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as Europeans entered the area in greater number, it became a center of historic land disputes. The new state of Georgia had ambitions to anchor its western claims (to the Mississippi River) by encouraging development here, but that project did not succeed. Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration during the Great Depression, the Tennessee Valley Authority was established to create infrastructure and jobs, resulting in electrification of a large rural area along the river. The Ford Motor Company did build and operate a plant for many years in the Listerhill community, three miles east of Muscle Shoals; it closed in 1982 as part of industrial restructuring when jobs moved out of the country.Since the 1960s, the city has been known for music. Local studios and artists developed the "Muscle Shoals Sound", including FAME Studios in the late 1950s and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 1969.

Muscle Shoals High School (MSHS),is the sole public secondary education institution in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. MSHS has been awarded the Blue Ribbon Lighthouse Award for Excellence.

Listerhill is an unincorporated community in Colbert County, in the U.S. state of Alabama. Listerhill contains a large aluminum plant. The community was named in honor of J. Lister Hill, a United States Senator from Alabama who was instrumental in the construction of the plant.

Muscle Shoals Sound Studio is an American recording studio in Sheffield, Alabama, formed in 1969 by four session musicians known as The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. They had left nearby FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals to create their own recording facility. They attracted noted artists from across the United States and Great Britain. Over the years, artists who recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio included The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Duane Allman, George Michael, Wilson Pickett, Willie Nelson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Joe Cocker, Levon Helm, Paul Simon, Bob Seger, Rod Stewart, Tamiko Jones, Cher and Cat Stevens.

Sweetwater Mansion (also known as the Governor Robert Patton House), located in Florence, Alabama, is a plantation house designed by General John Brahan of the Alabama Militia.

FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) Studios is a recording studio located at 603 East Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, an area of northern Alabama known as the Shoals. Though small and distant from the main recording locations of the American music industry, FAME has produced many hit records and was instrumental in what came to be known as the Muscle Shoals sound. It was started in the 1950s by Rick Hall, known as the Founder of Muscle Shoals Music. The studio, owned by Hall until his death in 2018, is still actively operating. It was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on December 15, 1997, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. The 2013 award-winning documentary Muscle Shoals features Rick Hall, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (also called The Swampers), and the Muscle Shoals sound originally popularized by FAME.