TUSCUMBIA

city, seat (1867) of Colbert County, northwestern Alabama, U.S., in the Muscle Shoals area on the Tennessee River. It forms with Florence, Sheffield, and the city of Muscle Shoals a four-city metropolitan area. Founded in 1817 as Ococoposa (a ChickasawChoctaw word meaning cold water, referring to a local creek), it was renamed Tuscumbia (1822) after Tash-Ka-Ambi, an Indian chief. It is a farming community with light manufacturing. Tuscumbia was the birthplace (Ivy Green) of Helen Keller, the internationally known blind and deaf lecturer. William Gibson's play The Miracle Worker (1959), portraying her childhood efforts under the tutelage of Anne Sullivan to overcome her handicaps, is staged there each summer. Inc. town, 1820; city, 1865. Pop. (1990) 8,413.