Shelby Iron Company stands on the site of an ironworks that was important to Alabama’s nineteenth-century industry. Begun on December 29, 1842, by Horace Ware south of Columbiana, the operation started with a single brick-and-stone cold-blast furnace that stood thirty feet high and produced about five tons of iron daily. During the Civil War, Shelby iron supplied Confederate military needs, including plating for the CSS Tennessee, CSS Huntsville, and CSS Tuscaloosa, as well as cannons and shells made in Columbiana. Connected by rail to Columbiana and beyond, the works was destroyed on March 31, 1865, by troops from General Emory Upton’s division, but iron production later resumed into the early twentieth century.