(from Rockwood 2000 archived Web page)

Rockwood was founded in 1868 as the property of the Roane Iron Company.  Prior to the Civil War, little iron was produced in Roane County.  The aftermath of the war left Tennessee in a state of desolation, and local capital for the development of industry did not exist.

It would be left to Union soldiers like General John Wilder, Captain Hiram S. Chamberlain, General Joshua Chamberlain, and Major William O. Rockwood, who had passed through the ore rich hills and valleys of Roane County during the War, to return and invest their capital in the fledgling iron industry of Roane County.

The Roane Iron Company of Rockwood is one of the earliest and most notable of these ventures.  Founded under the guidance of General Wilder in 1867, Roane Iron continued to operate until January 30, 1930. Other ventures such as the East Tennessee Land Company, Cardiff Iron & Coal Company, and Oakdale Iron Works, were similar in nature but were defunct within three years.  The success of Roane Iron is probably due to some very smart economic moves.  For example in the 1880’s the company encouraged the development of private enterprise in Rockwood.

Up to this point, the whole town was owned and operated by Roane Iron. Workers were paid in Company currency locally known as “paoli” which was redeemable at company owned businesses.  But Company management realized that the economic base needed to be diversified.

In a move to do that, new industry was encouraged and some, such as Rockwood Stove Works and Rockwood Knitting Mills, were established.  Privately owned stores opened up to compete with the Company Store. And in 1890, Roane Iron sold lots to would be homeowners.  The Victorian homes still standing along Kingston Avenue are a result of that decision.

The company system flourished until mine disasters and market situations in the late twenties took their toil [sic].  Pig iron was still produced in Rockwood until the advent of plastic PVC plumbing pipe which replaced the old cast iron pipes made from pig iron.

One has only to visit Rockwood, Tennessee and take a look around to know its history is that of the Pig Iron industry of the Reconstruction South.  Cities like Birmingham and Fort Payne, Alabama, Chattanooga and Harriman, Tennessee all share a similar heritage.  The streets of this and surrounding towns are paved with asphalt made from slag, the by-product of the industry.  The old company store still stands in a state of decay at the end of Rockwood Street. 

The houses on West Rockwood Street stand as a symbol of the social strata of the Company Town.  There is the large and comfortable superintendent house and the more modest homes built to house upper management and skilled workers.  Miners’ row, houses built to accomodate the Welsh miners who were brought to Rockwood to mine the ore and coal, which are the raw products of pig iron, still stand along Spring and Furnace Streets.  And behind it all is the mighty Waldens Ridge, that stretches from Alabama to Ohio, riddled with the remains of coal and ore mines, and coke ovens.

Rockwood’s Historic Locations

Many of Rockwood’s historic homes and buildings are located along Kingston Avenue, Rockwood Street, and Chamberlain Avenue. For your touring enjoyment, please drive or walk through our historic areas.

H. L. Preston in his book Dirt Roads to Dixie says:

The absence of comfortable tourist facilities in the South and a widely held belief that tourists camps were dirty, offensive places frequented solely by unwashed vagrants led the thousands and thousands of motorists who wandered through the region during the 1920’s and 1930’s to seek overnight accommodations in numerous renovated inns and countless private homes opened to the public.  Commonly found along the early nineteenth-century roads that connected major population centers, roadside inns, or road houses…had served the needs of stagecoach travelers until the widespread use of railroads put them out of business.  Many twentieth-century tourists, like their nineteenth-century predecessors, swore that when they came into the South, they rediscovered the appreciated American virtues of generosity, grace, and courtesy, and experienced in inns and tourist homes what life was like during antebellum days.  If it was southern hospitality that motorists sought, there was always a nearby tourist home.  On a motor trip down the Dixie Highway in 1931, one motorist recalled asking a police officer to recommend a suitable hotel, only to be overheard by a hospitable southerner who insisted that the tourist stay at his home, “Come with me,” the tourist remembered his host saying, “It will be a pleasure to have you with us.”  The writer continued, “Those are mistaken who say that the old southern hospitality is a thing of the past; that the automobile has killed it.  See if you do not find it in evidence as you journey down on Dixie!”

Rockwood’s Historic Kingston Avenue is a portion of the original Dixie Highway.

© 2005 Rockwood 2000.  This website made possible by a gift from Marion Unterweger.