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Blast Furnaces First Operated in 1882, Birmingham's Industrial Heart
20 32nd Street North, Birmingham, AL 35222
Research updated October 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Self-guided access is free. Public guided tours carry a small fee.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Mixed gravel, concrete, and metal grating; some industrial features have stairs only
Equipment
Photos OK
National Historic Landmark · Birmingham Industrial History · Labor and Iron-Making History
Colonel James Withers Sloss founded the Sloss Furnace Company in 1881. Construction of Sloss’s new furnace began in June 1881, and the furnaces went into blast in April 1882. The works sat at the intersection of the Louisville and Nashville and Alabama Great Southern railroads, perfectly positioned to draw on the iron ore of Red Mountain, the limestone of nearby quarries, and the coal of the Warrior Coalfield to the north — the three raw materials of pig-iron production.
Sloss sold the works in 1886. The new owners formed the Sloss Iron and Steel Company, which underwent further reorganizations into the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company in 1899 and the Sloss-Sheffield division of U.S. Pipe and Foundry from 1952. The works were largely rebuilt between 1927 and 1931 with two larger blast furnaces, producing the structure visitors see today.
The labor force was predominantly Black throughout the operating era. Sloss employed thousands of workers across multiple shifts; conditions in the casting shed were extreme, with molten iron at over 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit poured by hand into open sand molds. At least 47 worker deaths were documented during the operating era. Tuberculosis and silicosis were widespread.
Production ended on December 1, 1971. Plans to demolish the complex for redevelopment triggered a preservation campaign that succeeded in placing the works on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and earning National Historic Landmark designation in 1981. The Sloss Furnaces Foundation has operated the site as a public industrial-heritage museum since 1983.
Sloss is the only 20th-century blast-furnace operation in the United States preserved as a publicly accessible interpretive site.
Sources
The most-circulated Sloss legend concerns James "Slag" Wormwood, described as a brutal night-shift foreman who fell into a furnace in October 1906. Local historians and the Sloss Furnaces Foundation itself acknowledge that Wormwood is a fictional character created for the seasonal Sloss Fright Furnace haunted attraction. No Wormwood appears in surviving company employment records.
The Wormwood story draws loosely on the documented 1887 death of Calvin Jowers, a foundryman at the neighboring Alice Furnace who lost his balance and fell into a ladle of molten iron. When Alice Furnace was dismantled in 1905, reports of Jowers's apparition were said to have transferred to the still-operating Sloss complex. Whether Jowers's name was ever firmly attached to Sloss reports during the operating era is unclear in surviving records.
Reported phenomena documented during the post-1983 museum era include phantom whistles in the casting shed, disembodied voices calling "get back to work," the sensation of being shoved or pushed near the iron-bath area, equipment malfunction during paranormal investigations, and apparitions in the boiler room and the worker bathhouses. The site has been featured on multiple paranormal television programs and ranks among the most-investigated sites in the American South.
The industrial labor history that grounds the lore is well documented: at least 47 worker deaths during operations, racial segregation of the labor force, and conditions that produced silicosis and tuberculosis at high rates. Hauntbound treats the documented worker history as the source of the site's emotional weight rather than the fictional Wormwood narrative.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Walk the preserved blast-furnace complex that operated from 1882 to 1971 — two towering 400-foot stacks, the casting shed, the boiler room, and the worker bathhouses. Interpretive panels cover the iron-making process and the lives of the thousands of workers, predominantly Black, who powered Birmingham's iron industry.
Public guided tours carry a small fee and run Tuesday-Saturday at 10:30am or 2:00pm; schedule online. The route covers the founding of the works under Colonel James W. Sloss in 1881, the 1928 conversion to a more modern operation, the 1971 shutdown, and the 1981 National Historic Landmark designation that saved the complex from demolition.
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