Harper Lee to be Immortalized in New Harper Lee Trail in Monroeville, Alabama

Posted on December 2, 2016

Harper Lee's attorney has big plans for honoring her former client in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. AL.com reports that Mockingbird Company, the nonprofit organization which promotes Ms. Lee's work, is planning to create a Harper Lee Trail in the city which will have a major impact on tourism to the area. The city of Monroeville is all for the plan, which should bring hundreds of thousands of additional tourists to the small town.

Monroeville currently hosts only one tourist attraction: the Monroe County Courthouse, which Harper Lee used as the setting in her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. It now houses a small museum dedicated to Ms. Lee and her work. Under the new plan, the courthouse will be refurbished and the museum will be moved to the just purchased Old Monroe County Bank Building on the town's historic Courthouse Square. The Bank Building will be restored to its 1909 condition.

The Lee sisters' last home will be refurbished, as will three other homes from the to Kill a Mockingbird neighborhood. The three homes were Ms. Lee's inspiration for the homes of the characters in the book, including Boo Radley and Scout.

Ms. Lee's attorney Tonja Carter and paper mill magnate George Landegger are the driving forces behind the plans. Mr. Landegger hopes to lure 250,000 tourists a year with the new, improved Monroeville.