This photo was taken in 1993, but the ruins, of course, are even older. Taken at the Shelby Iron Works on County Road 42 in Shelby County, the photo shows the base of Furnace No. 1 ruins (left bottom) and ruins of the hot blast stove (right top). Now a park, the Shelby Iron Works was home to Alabama’s largest charcoal blast furnace and used to manufacture iron before and during the Civil War, according to the park’s Facebook page. Photo from Library of Congress.
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This first appeared in the March 2022 issue of Business Alabama magazine.