About the Musuem:
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.
Along with Tannehill artifacts that have survived, museum exhibits graphically demonstrate how iron was made during the Civil War when 14 different iron companies and six rolling mills made Alabama the arsenal of the Confederacy. During the last two years of the war, Alabama furnaces produced 70% of the Confederate iron supply.
Exhibits include a display of rare CS artillery projectiles manufactured at the Selma Arsenal and Gun Works, a part of the Steve Phillips Collection, along with Civil War weaponry actually used in battle including a 52 Cal. U.S. Spencer Repeater.
