Brierfield Furnace
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Brierfield Furnace
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Remnants of the Brierfield Furnace in 1993
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| Nearest city | Brierfield, Alabama |
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| Coordinates | 33°2′22″N 86°56′56″W / 33.03944°N 86.94889°WCoordinates: 33°2′22″N 86°56′56″W / 33.03944°N 86.94889°W |
| Area | 486 acres (197 ha) |
| Built | 1861 |
| Architect | Col. C.C. Huckabee, Jonathan Newton Smith |
| NRHP Reference # | 74000401 |
| Added to NRHP | November 20, 1974 |
The Brierfield Furnace, also known as the Bibb Naval Furnace and Brierfield Ironworks, is a historic district in Brierfield, Alabama. The district covers 486 acres (197 ha) and includes one building and nine sites. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 20, 1974. The district is encompassed by Brierfield Ironworks Historical State Park.
The Brierfield Furnace site was developed in 1861 by Caswell Campbell Huckabee, a Greensboro planter, and Jonathan Newton Smith, a Bibb County planter, on land purchased from Jesse Mahan near the Little Cahaba River, a tributary of the Cahaba. The endeavor was initially known as the Bibb County Iron Company, with Huckabee providing most of the capital and slave labor for construction. Richard Fell was employed to build a 36-foot-high (11 m) stone blast furnace and, in 1862, a rolling mill. The company produced cast iron initially, but soon changed over to the more lucrative production of wrought iron. The iron was used to produce farm implements.
Recognizing the high quality of iron produced at Brierfield, Confederate officials forced the men to sell the ironworks to the government for $600,000 in 1863, renaming it the Bibb Naval Furnace. A new 40-foot-high (12 m) brick furnace was built and a railroad line was constructed to connect the furnace to the mainline of the Alabama and Tennessee River Railroad. The output of the ironworks was then shipped to the Confederate arsenal at Selma. By 1864, the furnace was producing 25 tons of iron per day, much of which went into producing over 100 Brooke rifles ( a type of naval and coastal cannon), one of the South's most important weapons, at Selma. This all ended on March 31, 1865, when the Bibb Naval Furnace was destroyed by the 10th Missouri Volunteer Cavalry during Wilson's Raid.
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