Ironmaking at the Tannehill site began in 1830, when Daniel Hillman Sr. constructed a bloomery forge along Roupes Creek in what is now Tuscaloosa County. The forge sat idle until 1836, when Ninian Tannehill purchased it and established a plantation around the operation. But it was Moses Stroup, a noted southern ironmaster, who transformed the site between 1859 and 1862, erecting three charcoal-fired blast furnaces capable of producing iron at an industrial scale. The timing was deliberate: the Confederacy desperately needed iron for cannon, shot, and naval armor. Tannehill's output flowed to the Selma Arsenal and the CS Naval Gun Works, making this stretch of Alabama forest a strategic military asset. The furnaces operated until March 31, 1865, when the 8th Iowa Cavalry swept through and reduced them to rubble. The destruction was thorough but not total -- enough stonework survived to give archaeologists and historians a remarkably complete picture of antebellum iron production.

The Tannehill furnaces were not an isolated enterprise. They were the beginning of something much larger. Alabama sat on a geological coincidence almost unique in the world: iron ore, coal, and limestone -- the three ingredients for steelmaking -- all within a few miles of each other in the Birmingham District. In the late 1800s, northern bankers and southern investors poured money into the region. Companies like Woodward Iron built private railroads stretching 12 miles and beyond, linking blast furnaces to quarries of limestone and dolomite and on to coal mines and ore pits. The labor that fed these furnaces came from sharecroppers fleeing the poverty of Alabama's tenant farming system, which trapped over 60 percent of the state's farming population, and from the convict-lease system, which until its abolition in 1928 supplied iron manufacturers with prisoners as cheap labor. Thirteen iron companies and six rolling mills eventually operated in the district, making Alabama the arsenal of both the Confederacy and the New South.

The Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama opened in 1981 as the park's interpretive center, and it has grown into a repository of more than 10,000 archaeological artifacts recovered from eight major on-site investigations conducted between 1956 and 2008. The collection spans the full arc of Alabama's iron age: belt-driven machines, a reconstruction of an 1870s machine shop, four rare steam engines, forge cams, and war materials manufactured at the Selma naval works. Visitors can trace a timeline of industrial growth from ancient Egyptian smelting to the modern Fairfield Works in Birmingham. Sixteen slave cabins have been unearthed on the grounds in more recent excavations, adding a human dimension that the machinery alone cannot convey. The museum connects to the preserved Tannehill furnaces via the Tram Track Hiking Trail, and a small research library houses historical archives, first-hand accounts, and published materials for scholars investigating the iron-making history of the American South.

Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park, created by the Alabama Legislature in 1969, has become one of the most visited sites in the state, drawing more than 425,000 visitors each year. The park sprawls across 1,500 acres in three counties, offering hiking, camping, and more than 30 major outdoor events annually, including monthly Trade Days from March through November and Civil War battle reenactments. In 2017, Tannehill became one of six Birmingham-area historical sites contributing to the Birmingham Industrial Heritage Trail, a recognition that the story of iron and steel is not just industrial history but the foundational narrative of Alabama's largest city. The furnace ruins still stand in the woods, blackened and mossy, the charcoal-stained stone a reminder that Birmingham was not born from cotton or politics but from fire and ore and the labor of thousands.