John Hanby came in 1817 and found a rich seam of brown iron ore. The place was named Champion in 1882 when Henry DeBardeleben and James Sloss bought land and brought the L&N Railroad, helping cause the county seat to be moved from Blountsville to Oneonta in 1889. Most of the ore was mined by Shook and Fletcher from 1925 to 1967 at the Champion and Taits Gap mines under superintendent E. N. Vandergrift. The ore was shipped to Woodward, T. C. I. and Sloss furnaces in Birmingham and Republic in Gadsden.