Locks, Coal, and Mercedes: The Industrial River

The locks and dams came in the eighteen eighties. The Army Corps of Engineers built them along the Black Warrior River to tame what had been, for most of the city's history, a navigational obstacle. The river ran fast and shallow above the fall line, impassable by loaded boats in low water and dangerous in high water.

After the Corps finished its work, a vessel could travel from Tuscaloosa to the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile, more than three hundred miles, by river. What that connection enabled was coal. The Black Warrior Basin north of Tuscaloosa sat above significant deposits, and once the river was navigable, the coal could move.

Mining companies opened operations in the hills. The railroad came first to service the mines, then the barges replaced the railroads for the heaviest bulk movement south. By the early twentieth century, Tuscaloosa had become a transit point for the industrial economy of central Alabama.

Steel companies set up along the river. The Port of Tuscaloosa, at river mile three hundred thirty-eight, handles dry bulk commodities and connects by barge to Mobile's Gulf port. Mercedes-Benz announced in September nineteen ninety-three that it would build its first North American automotive assembly plant in Tuscaloosa County, specifically in the town of Vance.

The announcement was significant enough to make international news. It represented a new chapter for the county's manufacturing economy, one anchored not in extraction but in precision assembly. The plant opened in nineteen ninety-seven and has been producing vehicles ever since, including sport utility vehicles and all-electric models.

It employs thousands of people in the county. The university, the hospitals, the manufacturing base: these are the three legs of the modern Tuscaloosa economy. The river that made the third leg possible still runs through the northern part of the city, its flow now controlled by a chain of reservoirs all the way to Demopolis.