Chilton County, Alabama | |
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Chilton County Courthouse in Clanton
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Location in the U.S. state of Alabama |
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Alabama's location in the U.S. |
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Founded | December 30, 1868 |
Named for | William Parish Chilton, Sr. |
Seat | Clanton |
Largest city | Clanton |
Area | |
• Total | 701 sq mi (1,816 km2) |
• Land | 693 sq mi (1,795 km2) |
• Water | 7.9 sq mi (20 km2), 1.1% |
Population (est.) | |
• (2015) | 43,943 |
• Density | 63/sq mi (24/km²) |
Congressional district | 6th |
Time zone | Central: UTC-6/-5 |
Website | www |
Footnotes:
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Footnotes:
Chilton County is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2010 census, the population was 43,643. The county seat is Clanton. Its name is in honor of William Parish Chilton, Sr. (1810–1871), a lawyer who became Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and later represented Montgomery County in the Congress of the Confederate States of America.
Chilton County is included in the Birmingham-Hoover, AL Metropolitan Statistical Area.
In 2010, the center of population of Alabama was located in Chilton County, near the city of Jemison, an area known as Jemison Division.
The county is known for its peaches and its unique landscape. It is home to swamps, prairies and mountains due to the foothills of the Appalachians which end in the county, the Coosa River basin, and its proximity to the Black Belt Prairie that was long a center of cotton production.
Baker County was established on December 30, 1868, named for Alfred Baker, with its county seat at Grantville. Residents of the county petitioned the Alabama legislature for the renaming of their county; it was not something forced upon them. On December 17, 1874, the petitioners accepted the suggestion of Chilton County, even though the Chief Justice had not lived within its boundaries. In 1870 the county seat was moved after the court house burned to what is now Clanton.