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The Wenonah community (formerly Fossil) was the name of one of a series of Red Mountain ore mining camps for employees of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company (TCI).
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2018) |
The Wenonah community (formerly Fossil) was the name of one of a series of Red Mountain ore mining camps for employees of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company (TCI).
The name was chosen by TCI's social science director Marion Whidden as a complement to the company's Ishkooda and Muscoda camps. All three names appear in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha". [1] The TCI camps were designated from west to east as: Muscoda Division Camp - mines #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, Wenonah Division Camp ( originally referred to as the TCI Fossil Division ) mines #6½ #7, #8, #9, #10 and the Ishkooda Division Camp - mines #11, #12, #13, #14, #15.
The oldest TCI mine was in the Ishkooda camp #13, which opened in 1873 as part the Eureka Company Mines and was called Eureka #2 mine. The oldest Wenonah Camps were #7 and #10 where the mines opened in 1880, known then as the Alice mine - #7 and Redding mine - #10. Mine #6½, which opened in 1910 and other mines were listed on the 1916 Birmingham Mining District maps. Wenonah Number 6½ was next to the Woodward Iron Company's Red Ore camp mine #2, which was on the #6½ western boundary, and also near here was the location of the water reservoir that in about 1947 was replaced with a covered water tank, now owned by the Bessemer Water Works. The reservoir/tank is located in the Lipscomb area of Jefferson County.
By 1900, TCI was operating 15 iron ore mines in the Birmingham District including the Wenonah #7, and #8 mining camps. In 1880, before TCI became the owner, the #7 mine was operated by T.T. Hillman and Henry DeBardeleben's Alice Furnace Company. The #7 mine in those days was called the Alice Mine and also sometimes referred to as the Hillman Mine. The Wenonah #8 mine, opened in 1887, was originally the Fossil Mine and was operated by the Smith Mining Company. Wenonah Mining Camp #7, later in 1940, became the site of the sintering plant that processed the iron ore before being transported via The High Line Railroad connection from Red Mountain to the Fairfield Works. The Highline was constructed in 1925. In 1914, TCI began ongoing facilities and programs to improve lives of employees with schools (Wenonah School), hospitals (Lloyd Noland Hospital), training programs and housing.
The oldest was Wenonah Camp #7 (circa 1880) as listed on the 1916 Birmingham Mining District maps. Number 6 1/2 was next to the Woodward Iron Company's camp #2 on its western boundary and was the location of the water reservoir that in about 1947 was replaced with a covered water tank, now owned by the Bessemer Water Works. The reservoir/tank is located in the Lipscomb area of Jefferson County.
Wenonah Mining Camp #7 (1880-1938), located on the southwest boundary of Browns Station, was also the site of the plant that processed the iron ore before being transported via High Ore Line Railroad connection from Red Mountain to the Fairfield Works.
Wenonah Camp #8 (1887-1938), was located just south of Hillman on the north side of Red Mountain, and is sometimes referred to as "New Hill". It was also the site of the company commissary, doctor's office and other administrative offices.
Wenonah camp #9 was south of Grasselli Heights on the north side of Red Mountain. It was the location of the Wenonah School, built in 1917 on the current East Brownsville Park site, as part of the program to improve lives of employees. The #9 mine was opened in 1897 under contract to the Smith Mining Company and then was known as the Klondike mine.
Wenonah Camp #10 (1880-1952), was located adjacent to West Goldwire and south of the current Wenonah High School. It is now known as Tarpley City.
In 1962, the TCI - US Steel Red Mountain ore mines closed in Birmingham District as material and labor cost begin to increase. Due to a higher grade, the ore in Venezuela began to be used. The last Iron Ore mine to close in the Birmingham district was the Woodward Company #4 (Pyne)mine, The Pyne Mine which was located just south of Bessemer, Muscoda and Readers Gap. The Pyne Mine closed in 1971.
Bessemer is a southwestern suburb of Birmingham in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States. The population was 27,456 at the 2010 Census. It is within the Birmingham-Hoover, AL Metropolitan Statistical Area, of which Jefferson County is the center. It developed rapidly as an industrial city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 2019, it was named Alabama's "Worst City to Live in" by 24/7 Wall Street.
The Mesabi Iron Range is a mining district in northeastern Minnesota following an elongate trend containing large deposits of iron ore. It is the largest of four major iron ranges in the region collectively known as the Iron Range of Minnesota. First described in 1866, it is the chief iron ore mining district in the United States. The district is located largely in Itasca and Saint Louis counties. It has been extensively worked since 1892, and has seen a transition from high-grade direct shipping ores through gravity concentrates to the current industry exclusively producing iron ore (taconite) pellets. Production has been dominantly controlled by vertically integrated steelmakers since 1901, and therefore is dictated largely by US ironmaking capacity and demand.
Nokomis is the name of Nanabozho's grandmother in the Ojibwe traditional stories and was the name of Hiawatha's grandmother in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, The Song of Hiawatha, which is a re-telling of the Nanabozho stories. Nokomis is an important character in the poem, mentioned in the familiar lines:
Siderite is a mineral composed of iron(II) carbonate (FeCO3). It takes its name from the Greek word σίδηρος sideros, "iron". It is a valuable iron mineral, since it is 48% iron and contains no sulfur or phosphorus. Zinc, magnesium and manganese commonly substitute for the iron resulting in the siderite-smithsonite, siderite-magnesite and siderite-rhodochrosite solid solution series.
Red Mountain is a long ridge running southwest-northeast and dividing Jones Valley from Shades Valley south of Birmingham, Alabama. It is part of the Ridge-and-Valley region of the Appalachian mountains. The Red Mountain Formation of hard Silurian rock strata lies exposed in several long crests, and was named "Red Mountain" because of the rust-stained rock faces and prominent seams of red hematite iron ore. The mountain was the site of the Sloss, Republic Steel, Woodward Iron and Tennessee Coal and iron mines which supplied ore to Birmingham's iron furnaces. The best displays of the mountain's geological strata occur at the Twentieth Street cut near the Vulcan statue and at the U.S. Route 31 highway cut leading into the suburb of Homewood. Most of Birmingham's television and radio stations have their transmission towers located on Red Mountain.
Gilman is an abandoned mining town in southeastern Eagle County, Colorado, United States. The U.S. Post Office at Minturn now serves Gilman postal addresses.
The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was a large steel conglomerate founded by the merger of previous business interests in 1892. By 1903 it was mainly owned and controlled by John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould's financial heirs. While it came to control many plants throughout the country, its main plant was a steel mill on the south side of Pueblo, Colorado and was the city's main industry for most of its history. From 1901 to 1912, Colorado Fuel and Iron was one of the Dow Jones Industrials. The steel-market crash of 1982 led to the decline of the company. After going through several bankruptcies, the company was acquired by Oregon Steel Mills in 1993, and changed its name to Rocky Mountain Steel Mills. In January 2007, Rocky Mountain Steel Mills, along with the rest of Oregon Steel's holdings, were acquired by EVRAZ Group, a Russian steel corporation, for $2.3 billion.
The Tannehill Ironworks is the central feature of Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park near the unincorporated town of McCalla in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Tannehill Furnace, it was a major supplier of iron for Confederate ordnance. Remains of the old furnaces are located 12 miles (19 km) south of Bessemer off Interstate 59/Interstate 20 near the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains. The 2,063-acre (835 ha) park includes: the John Wesley Hall Grist Mill; the May Plantation Cotton Gin House; and the Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama.
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Adger is an unincorporated crossroads community in Jefferson County, Alabama, southwest of Birmingham.
The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (1852–1952), also known as TCI and the Tennessee Company, was a major American steel manufacturer with interests in coal and iron ore mining and railroad operations. Originally based entirely within Tennessee, it relocated most of its business to Alabama in the late nineteenth century. With a sizable real estate portfolio, the company owned several Birmingham satellite towns, including Ensley, Fairfield, Docena, Edgewater and Bayview. It also established a coal mining camp it sold to U.S. Steel which developed it into the Westfield, Alabama planned community.
Manganese is a ghost town and former mining community in the U.S. state of Minnesota that was inhabited between 1912 and 1960. It was built in Crow Wing County on the Cuyuna Iron Range in sections 23 and 28 of Wolford Township, about 2 miles (3 km) north of Trommald, Minnesota. After its formal dissolution, Manganese was absorbed by Wolford Township; the former town site is located between Coles Lake and Flynn Lake. First appearing in the U.S. Census of 1920 with an already dwindling population of 183, the village was abandoned by 1960.
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Spring Creek Debris Dam is an earthfill dam on Spring Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River, in Shasta County in the U.S. state of California. Completed in 1963, the dam, maintained by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, serves primarily to collect severe acid mine drainage stemming from the Iron Mountain Mine. The dam forms the Spring Creek Reservoir, less than 1 mile (1.6 km) long. Spring Creek and South Fork Spring Creek flow into the reservoir from a 16-square-mile (41 km2) watershed. The dam is directly upstream from the city of Keswick, California and the Keswick Reservoir. The operation is part of the Trinity River Division of the Central Valley Project.
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The Pyne Mine was a vertical shaft iron ore mine operated by the Woodward Iron Company and located near the Lacey's Chapel community outside Bessemer, Alabama, in Shades Valley. It was, along with Woodward's Songo Mine, one of only two shaft mines dug in the Birmingham District, and the last ore mine to operate in the region, closing in 1971.
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Docena is an unincorporated community in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States. Docena is 8 miles (13 km) west-northwest of downtown Birmingham and has a post office with ZIP code 35060.