We left Bassfield, Monday, June 22, headed toward
Nashville, TN. As is our usual way when traveling, we stopped mid-afternoon to kick back and relax and take in the sites.
The Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama is a southeastern regional interpretive center on 19th century iron making technology featuring both belt driven machines of the 1800s and tools and products of the times. It focuses on the Roupes Valley Ironworks at Tannehill which operated nearby, first as a bloomery beginning in 1830 and later as an important battery of charcoal blast furnaces during the Civil War. The ironworks gave birth to the Birmingham Iron & Steel District.
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| Alabama Iron Works Museum |
While at the museum I learned about the Confederate States Cemetery Marker. Though I've seen them many times I never really knew the history.
The markers were originally sold by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to the families of Confederate veterans in the late 1880s and 1890s before marble markers were provided by the United States Government through the Veterans Administration.
Hundreds of these Crosses of Honor were sold to mark the graves of departed loved ones for $12 a piece. The opposite side reads, Deo Vindici, 1861-1865 (which is Latin for God is our vindicator).
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| Cast Iron C.S. Cemetery Marker |
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| John Wesley Grist mill in operation 1867 - 1931 |
Tannehill Furnaces are Among the Nation's Best Preserved Civil War LandmarksThe old Tannehill Furnaces in Roupes Valley, ... constitute one of the oldest industrial sites in the Birmingham Iron and Steel District. Founded in 1830 as a small plant for smelting iron, Tannehill expanded during the Civil War into a large battery of three blast furnaces capable of producing 22 tons of pig iron daily for Confederate military needs. The ironworks, along with a dozen other such facilities in Alabama, were badly damaged in the closing months of the Civil War.
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| Furnaces @ Tannehill |
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| Hiking path |
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