Irondale Furnace
Near Birmingham, Alabama
This spot, along a branch of Shades Creek, gave the city of Irondale both its iron and its name. In the early eighteen sixties, an ironmaster named W. S.
McElwain built a blast furnace here and called it the Cahaba Iron Works, though everyone just called it Irondale. It was Confederate war industry. The furnace produced pig iron, which was hauled by oxcart down to the railroad and on to the Confederate arsenal at Selma, where it was turned into munitions.
A community grew up around it, and the reopened furnace later employed more than five hundred men. Then, in March of eighteen sixty-five, Union raiders under General James Wilson swept through and destroyed it. McElwain and other investors pooled their money and rebuilt after the war, and the iron and railroad town that survived voted to incorporate as Irondale in eighteen eighty-seven.
