Piper was established in 1901 a half mile northeast of here by the Little Cahaba Coal Company and was named for Oliver Hazzard Perry Piper, a partner of industrialist Henry F. DeBardeleben. Two coal mines were opened there in 1901 and 1903, and the first was sealed in 1935 because of fire. Piper became one of the larger mining towns in the Cahaba Coal Field, reaching its greatest employment in 1914 with 432 miners and related workers. The Piper-Coleanor High School operated from 1931 to 1940. After World War II, a third mine was opened, and beginning in 1947 it was operated by the Shaw and Tutwiler Corporation. Coal had first been mined in the area by N. H. Thompson and his sons, W.H. and Lewis, who had moved there from Hinds County, Mississippi, during the Civil War, and the last coal was mined on a limited scale in the 1950s. Coleanor was founded when the Blocton-Cahaba Coal Company was incorporated in September 1900 and soon opened a coal mine there. Its principal stockholders included H.C. Reynolds, W.B. Reynolds, E.D. Reynolds, and J.B. Wadsworth. Although Piper and Coleanor were adjacent and separated by a deep ravine, they were connected by a railroad trestle and a swinging bridge. In 1915, 200 miners and other workers were employed at Coleanor. Both towns were occupied by the Alabama National Guard in 1934 during a strike organized by the United Mine Workers Union. The Coleanor Post Office operated from 1901 to 1942. Following World War II, the Coleanor mine was closed, and nothing remains of either town, which once had a combined population of more than 2,500 people.