The Furnaces came into being in 1880 when a North Alabama merchant and railroad man named Colonel James Withers Sloss founded the Sloss Furnace Company.  Operations started in 1882 on a site covering over 50 acres after several furnaces had been constructed there.  After just one year in operations over 24,000 tons of iron had been sold. Sloss Furnaces, as it became known, received a bronze medal for "best pig iron" at the 1883 Louisville Exposition and started a legacy for the city of Birmingham that remains today.Sloss Furnace shut there doors in 1971.