While traveling south with his troops, General Andrew Jackson camped at the fork of the river in 1813 and carved his name in a locust tree, giving the area the name Locust Fork. In 1817, the Hanby family came from Virginia and settled in this community on a tract of land near the Polly Martin Ford on the Warrior River, where they built a three-story log house used as an inn. Gabriel Hanby died in March 1826 and is buried in the Hudson Cemetery. He is credited as the first Blount County citizen to represent Blount County in the Alabama State Legislature in the early 1800s. Nick Hudson later built a public inn in what is now Locust Fork and erected barns to shelter the horses and hogs of Tennessee farmers who drove them to the deeper South for a more profitable market. The community's first church, Tabernacle, a Methodist church built with slave labor near Robinette Springs, served for both school and church activities. In 1921 a new school building was erected, another classroom was added the following year, and in 1928 two more classrooms were added. In 1937, with WPA assistance, a new high school was constructed. The school burned on January 10, 1961, and a new building now stands on the site. Locust Fork was incorporated on January 18, 1977, with F. M. Wilder elected as the town's first mayor and Hoyt Ingram, Roderick Jett, James Glass, Glenn Osborne, and Paul Marsh serving as council members. The volunteer fire department was organized on May 23, 1978, with Robert "Bob" Rutherford as fire chief.