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History · Irondale

Irondale’s history is mostly unwritten

The public archives hold no old photos of Irondale yet. The rest are in attics, shoeboxes and the historical society. Help start the collection.

0old photos & papers

What stands out about Irondale’s past

Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.

★ What stands out · Help out

Start Irondale’s collection

The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Irondale’s history is told.

Decades since 1900 with photos
00s10s20s30s40s50s60s70s80s90s
0 of 10 decades. The empty ones are waiting for someone’s album.
The story

How Irondale came to be

From Wikipedia’s history of Irondale.

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Irondale was originally known as Pottsdale, for Samuel Potts, who started a salt operation at Yellow Creek circa 1806. In 1869 Morgan & Hunter laid out the original plat of what was then called Hunterville which later was changed to Irondale after the discovery of iron ore and other minerals used in the manufacture of tin. Coal mining began at the settlement in 1861. A blast furnace was built later to supply iron to the tin mill which gave the town its new name, Irondale. The first commercially successful tin mill in the United States operated in Irondale in the 1880s.

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

By decade

Irondale, decade by decade

Famous people

Famous people close to Irondale

Nobody well known was born in Irondale itself, so here are the best known from just nearby.

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Memory lane

What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.

Town Square →
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From Wikimedia Commons (3) and Wikipedia. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.

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