Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama

rdf:langString Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama

rdf:langString AL-123

rdf:langString The Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama in the Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park

rdf:langString al1169

rdf:langString Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama, 12632 Confederate Parkway, Bucksville, Tuscaloosa County, AL

rdf:langString The Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama, also known as the Tannehill Museum, is an industrial museum that demonstrates iron production in the nineteenth-century Alabama located at Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park in McCalla, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Opened in 1981, it covers 13,000 square feet (1,200 m2). The museum is an interpretive center focusing on 19th-century iron-making technology. It features an extensive collection of machinery and other iron industry artifacts spanning from the time of the American Civil War until the 1960s, including belt-driven machines, a reconstruction of an 1870s machine shop, and four steam engines. The collection also houses over ten thousand artifacts and other items sourced from archaeological digs at various iron-making sites in Alabama such as the Roupes Valley Ironworks, and from the Alabama Department of Archives and History, the Henry Ford Museum, and the Washington Navy Yard. The collection includes rare steam engines, forge cams and war materials manufactured at the CS Naval Gun Works at Selma, Alabama. In the museum, the collections and displays feature both belt-driven machines and the nineteenth century iron-making tools and products. The museum preserves more than 10,000 historical relics, including collections from the Washington Navy Yard and the Henry Ford Museum, as well as rare iron-making machinery from the Tredegar Ironworks from Virginia. The displayed ironworks show how iron making developed during the period from the Civil war to the 1960s. By visiting the museum, visitors can understand how iron making in this area grows into the later Birmingham District. This site preserves and demonstrates thousands of artefacts from archaeological digs in this area, showing the previous human activities in Alabama from the end of the Civil war to the middle of the 20 centuries. On top of that, 16 slave cabins have also been unearthed on the site in more recent excavations. The museum is connected with the best preserved furnaces at Tannehill Ironworks by the Tram Track Hiking Trail. Various interactive displays are available in the museum, which can enable the visitors to go back into the historical environments in the nineteenth-century Alabama. Visitors can follow the timeline of industrial growth to trace how iron trade developed from the ancient Egypt to modern Fairfield Works in Birmingham. The Tannehill Learning Centre currently offers educational programmes and tours to school children in this region. Museum visitors are provided with field trips during the spring and fall. The museum underwent a major renovation of its exhibits in 2004–05. The site also has a 30-seat theatre which plays a short video on the park's history.