Trussville: Warren Truss and His Grist Mill

The story of Trussville begins in eighteen twenty-one with a North Carolina man of English descent named Warren Truss. He arrived in what is now Jefferson County with his brothers, found a good spot on the Cahaba River, and built a grist mill. Settlers followed the mill, because where grain gets ground is where a community begins. The nearby settlement took his name and was called Truss.

For decades it stayed agricultural, a farming community at the foot of the Appalachian foothills. Then after the Civil War the Alabama-Chattanooga Railroad came through, connecting the valley to the wider economy. The town grew slowly and steadily, finally incorporating in nineteen forty-seven and achieving city status a decade later in nineteen fifty-seven. Today Trussville is one of Birmingham's more prosperous eastern suburbs, but the name on every road sign still points back to one man and one mill on the Cahaba River.