After Andrew Jackson defeated the Creek Nation at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, the Treaty of Fort Jackson and later treaties ceded Indian land that made up most of present-day Alabama. In 1822-1823, Abraham Stout was commissioned to build a public road from Gandy’s Cove in Cataco/Morgan County to Elyton, closely following old Indian trails through what is now Gardendale. Pioneers were already arriving, and after Stout’s Road was completed, settlers began purchasing land there, with the first recorded purchase made by John Belcher in 1824, followed by Otis Dyer in 1828 and Zachariah Stagg in 1834. James K. Jacks operated a tollgate on Stout’s Road near his plantation. In the 1870s, coal mines opened nearby, several operated by John T. Millner, a founder of Birmingham and surveyor of the South & North Railroad, and in 1892 he donated lumber for Gardendale’s first school, Millner School. Early businesses included stores, sawmills, cotton gins, and a grist mill, while dairies and farms dotted the area. Early churches included Shugart’s Chapel Methodist, now Gardendale-Mt. Vernon Methodist; Ebenezer Methodist; Friendship Methodist; Cluster Spring Baptist; and Chalybeate Springs Baptist, now Gardendale First Baptist. The community was first known as Jugtown for a jug factory operated in the 1870s by James Y. Miller near the present site of the Village Green Shopping Center. Through the efforts of Hettie Thompson Cargo, the name was changed to Gardendale in 1906. Dr. James Parker became Gardendale’s first fulltime doctor in the spring of 1923. Though the community grew steadily, it was not chartered until 1955, when J. I. Pesnell became its first mayor, and after half a century Gardendale had become the largest city in North Jefferson County.