State Training School for Girls Chalkville, Alabama

The Alabama State Training School for Girls Campus in Chalkville was used for over 100 years, from it’s conception in 1909. The school was the result of a program initially developed by the Protestant Women of Birmingham designed to help troubled girls learn anger management and develop life skills in a family atmosphere.Show more

The reform school program was undergoing its own reform in Alabama, and the girls were being moved to a new facility built by the Department of Youth Services, when the sprawling Chalkville campus was struck by an EF3 tornado in January 2012, leveling all but 4 of its 15 buildings. The dorm housing the remaining 18 girls sustained little damage and no one was injured.

Today, the abandoned buildings sit empty and derelict, a place where a new generation of wayward youths illegally scale locked gates to spray paint graffiti on walls and tell stories of those who once inhabited the "school for bad girls," as it was known to locals.