Certainly nothing etched in stone, but here are just a couple history's on that particular amel line. I have TONS of history's of many morphs and stories saved..........I hate beating the dead horse, but every once in a while this comes up, so here are a couple interesting tid-bits for the gallery..LOL!
More amel getula info
from- Terry Dunham
According to the range map in Brian Hubbs' great book "Common Kingsnakes: A Natural History of Lampropeltis getula", the Chattooga River is throughout its length solely in the range of Lgg, not nigra, and not an Lgg-nigra intergrade zone.
I found the transcript of an interview i did with Kevin McCurley in 2003. The remarks below include the transcript AND corrections/additions he made to the transcript when i sent it to him for review. Kevin's conclusion was "I feel 100% certain" it is an eastern king, adding, "I have no other reason since I derive no monies from the project at this point." The transcript included his recollections.
Kevin said the albino:
"Came from a good ol' boy who bought snakes collected by local college
kids and sold them. That was more than ten years ago,
"I think around 8 years ago!!
"I was just getting started, i don't remember his name. But I'd gotten chain kings from him before and he called me and said he had an albino chain king, he wanted
to trade up, he wanted to get into blood pythons, things like that. So I
bought it. I wasn't sure what i'd get. We were actually doing some trading and he kind of pulled it out and said he also had that...he did not start the conversation with that intent.
2. DESCRIPTION
"I had chain kings and when it arrived I compared it to them and thought,
'this is it, a chain king'. I wasn't sure what he was going to send
me--an albino chain king or some other kind of king? So when I got it I
sat there and stared at that snake and checked it against books and
checked the head it was identical to my other chain kings. I felt
absolutely 100% confident it was a chain king. Yes, I was possibly expecting some albino speckle mix or albino cal king...it was an albino and weird to compare to a normal chain but the scalation matched and it did not look like anything but a chain king..it was small...a juvie.
"It had a very, very nice chain pattern, and it grew into a very big,
stocky animal, a real thick neck.
3. GEOGRAPHY
"I heard Tennessee and a river bank in the story of where it came from. I
might have heard Chattanooga, might have heard Chattooga, i don't know
the region and the ranges. I was familiar with Chattanooga as a place...it may have been Chattooga.
"I remember (it was)
"Collected by college student.
"Riverbank
"Cha..whatever and TN. It may have been near Chattooga riverbanks near
TN....That was not exactly critical to me. I was just getting it because I
thought it was cool. I paid exactly $900.00 for it!!
"thought it was Chattanooga, but it was a river bank. (MY NOTE: remember there is no Chattanooga River) Wherever it was, all the other kings I got from the same guy
were chain kings. I never had black kings (other than the mexican kind). I have never had a wild caught black king(eastern) ever!!
4. FIRST BREEDINGS
"I had a few wild caught female chain kings, and i bred them to him and
produced hets and they all looked exactly like chain kings.
Post #2 from Dunham......
Additional amel getula history 9/10/2009
>>I heard rumors of an albino black kingsnake coming out of Tennesee or North Georgia. It supposedly came from the integrade zone so my personal belief is that some of the albino Eastern kings we see are probably descendants from that line.
That animal is probably one the history of which can be found by searching this forum. It was collected by a fella who lived in the chattanooga TN area but who was said to have collected regularly in georgia. (the fella who bought the albino had bought wild-types from the same guy before, and said they always were typical looking chain kings.)
Because he believed it to be a chain king, the buyer bred the albino to chain kings and eventually there was a good supply of them, so there's no doubt not just some but most of the amel "eastern" kings in the trade are from this line. I ended up with some and will post a pic. The chain pattern on the amels was narrower than on the hets (see pix) but i assumed the amelanism was affecting the pattern a little, as it does on some other morphs. One of the hets I got was supposedly a first-gen het, and it looked like Lgg, so I accepted that that's what they were. Of course, if the original amel WAS nigra but was bred to Lgg, the offspring would show intergrade appearance; if the original was a nigra/Lgg intergrade, because it was bred to Lgg the offspring would look much like Lgg. And, of course, if the original was an amel Lgg, the offspring would look like Lgg. So the visual evidence is hard to interpret.
The reason people wondered whether the original might be nigra or an intergrade was that in the buyer's early accounts of the acquisition, he said the collector mentioned "chattanooga" or "chatooga" or something that sounded like that: There's the city, of course, and there's the Chattooga River, where the movie Deliverance was filmed. (Wikipedia: "The Chattooga River serves as part of the boundary between Georgia and South Carolina after leaving North Carolina near latitude 35" There may be a second Chattooga River elsewhere in the SE, as well. At any rate, either the city or the river would put the collection site in nigra range or an intergrade zone (but close to the eastern end of it, in the case of the river). I reported the facts according to the original buyer at some length, and i'm sure someone will find that story and post it here.
Like you, I have no dog in this fight. They are what they are and like the hondurensis discussions on the milksnake forum, the precise answer may never be known.
Meanwhile, a photo or two... (note the link to a pic of an early het, just below the photos)
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing" 
my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com
