Sonny Brewer pulled into the parking lot of a commercial complex off U.S. 98 in Fairhope one night in 1982, ready for his first real estate class, when something off to the side caught his eye: a domed concrete hut, mysterious and out of place.

“A lady said, ‘It’s the hermit hut, don’t you know?’” Brewer recalled. “I said, ‘I know nothing about it. I’ve been living here a long time.’ She said, ‘You’re here for the real estate class?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said there is a matted and framed newspaper article on the wall, and you can read about it.”