Woodstock: Clay, Coal, and Eight Trains a Day

Woodstock was staked out in eighteen twenty-six, when William Houston received a federal land grant along the old Tuscaloosa-to-Huntsville stagecoach road. The location was well chosen: sitting between two cities on a well-traveled route, it grew into a genuine crossroads.

After the Civil War, railroads arrived and Woodstock transformed into a shipping hub. Two lines converged here, and trains rolled through day and night, hauling iron ore and coal from the mines around West Blocton north to the furnaces of Birmingham. The local clay was equally prized, feeding a pottery that turned out jugs, bricks, and churns. The town peaked between nineteen oh nine and nineteen twenty-nine, then the Depression drained the traffic away. For most of the twentieth century it went by the name North Bibb, finally reclaiming the name Woodstock in the year two thousand.