Destination Dixie: Tourism and Southern History

9 Calhoun County, Alabama: Confederate Iron Furnaces and the Remaking of History

204 9 Calhoun County, Alabama Confederate Iron Furnaces and the Remaking of History John Walker Davis and Jennifer Lynn Gross In a rural part of Calhoun County, Alabama, in a little town named Ohatchee, stands a once long-forgotten Civil War–era iron furnace. Its construction was barely completed before Union troops destroyed it in 1864, and it never produced an iota of iron for the Confederacy. Nonetheless, Janney Furnace, so named because the prime investor in its construction was a Montgomery businessman named Alfred Janney, has emerged as a potential cornerstone for local historical tourism in Calhoun County. The movers and shakers behind its rebirth, the “Friends of Janney Furnace,” see it not only in terms of its historical significance, something many historians might dispute, but, more importantly, as an ideological statement steeped in the mythology of the Old South and the Lost Cause. Some of them also see it as a potential economic boon for an economically depressed area. When the inaugural Ohatcheefest celebration occurred at the furnace in 1996, it drew modest crowds. In 2008 it remained a primarily local affair, but it had seen significant growth and expansion since its establishment. While the park’s guest book includes predominantly local visitors, there are also scattered among the names individuals who hail from across the state and the larger South. Part Civil War reenactment, part country fair, promotion for the twelfth annual Ohatcheefest proclaimed proudly, “Ohatchee will be filled with children, snacks, and gunfire.” Perhaps the furnace’s “Friends” are right in believing it could become a genuine tourist attraction rather than merely a local gathering. Proponents of Calhoun County’s efforts to turn a seemingly irrelevant John Walker Davis and Jennifer Lynn Gross 205 historical site into a significant tourist attraction include many members of the white community, local members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) and United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), and one stalwart supporter on the county commission, Eli Henderson. Soon after Henderson became a county commissioner in 1994, Doug Ghee, then a state legislator and local lawyer, contacted him about the dilapidated state of a Civil War–era iron furnace in Henderson’s district. Though a native of Calhoun County, Henderson knew nothing of the furnace until Ghee brought it to his attention. After persuading the other members of the county commission to purchase the iron furnace and the surrounding acre of land in August 1996, Henderson immediately got to work on the restoration of the furnace, consulting with Dr. Harry Holstein of nearby Jacksonville State University Archeology Department. Thanks to fund-raising efforts by the Friends of Janney Furnace, along with significant county monies and additional funding from an Alabama Historical Commission Restoration Grant and the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, an additional nineteen acres around the furnace was purchased in 1997, and the furnace—except for the charging bridge and retaining walls—was restored in 2001.1 Around the same time the furnace restoration was progressing, the members of the Tige Anderson Camp, SCV, petitioned the Anniston City Council for permission to erect a memorial wall to the county’s Confederate dead in Centennial Memorial Park. Anniston is the county seat of Calhoun County and is roughly eighteen miles from Janney Furnace. Centennial Memorial Park was initially limited to a wall listing the names of the 1,208 Alabamians lost in the Vietnam War (much in the fashion of the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.). It has, since its establishment, also become home to memorial walls to the Alabamians lost in other American wars. Interestingly, a special committee chaired by Henderson denied the SCV’s petition because “they (the Confederate dead) did not belong in the city.” Yet if, as Henderson and the Friends of Janney Furnace claim, the county lost “more young men in the Civil War than in any other armed conflict in the United States,” it would seem to make sense for the memorial to be in the county seat. Perhaps the reason a Confederate monument “did not belong” in Anniston was less about where Confederate memorials belong or do not belong and more about Henderson and others’ fear of sparking racial unrest. Anniston has long been and continues to be riddled with social and economic disparities drawn primarily along racial lines.2 These tensions exploded in the 1960s during the Freedom Rides and have 206 Confederate Iron Furnaces and...