Cardiff: The Company Town That Never Was
Tennessee
In eighteen ninety New England investors looked at the coal and iron seams of Roane County, Tennessee and saw the next Cardiff, Wales. They incorporated the Cardiff Coal and Iron Company with a roster of distinguished officers, including former Maine governor Joshua Chamberlain, the Civil War general who held Little Round Top at Gettysburg. The plan called for iron furnaces, coking ovens, rolling mills, and a full company town on Walden Ridge.
They named it Cardiff in the belief it would rival the great Welsh mining city. Money poured in and construction began. The company went into receivership in eighteen ninety-one and was forced into bankruptcy after the Panic of eighteen ninety-three.
Most of the population simply left. A neighboring venture called Harriman survived and grew, but Cardiff faded into a ghost of ambition. Today almost nothing remains of the town that General Chamberlain's investors imagined would become an industrial giant in the Tennessee hills.
