Anniston, AL City Guide and Yellow Pages

More About Anniston, Alabama

ed in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, the city of Anniston, Ala., with its quaint tree-lined boulevards, lovely parks and charming neighborhoods, sits midway between Birmingham, Ala., and Atlanta. Enjoying a diverse economic base, a scenic setting, and four distinct seasons with a humid subtropical climate, Anniston’s nickname is “The Model City.” Anniston is the county seat of Calhoun County.

The town is the industrial, commercial, and cultural heart of the county and the surrounding region. Thousands of acres of land are ready for development. The city has several lively historic districts, the Berman Museum of World History, the Anniston Museum of Natural History, and a variety of festivals and parades each year. In addition, Talladega Superspeedway and Cheaha State Park are major attractions for both tourists and for Anniston residents.

During the Reconstruction Era, the northeastern Alabama area grew into a vital regional hub for industry. Town founding fathers, Daniel Tyler and Samuel Noble built their own “Model City of the New South”, called Woodstock. The men hand-picked conservative Christians as their new residents. Their workers were paid high wages. In addition, the use of alcohol and gambling were forbidden. In 1873, another town named Woodstock was discovered in central Alabama. The founding fathers changed the name of the town to Anniston, after Daniel Tyler’s daughter-in-law, Annie Tyler. “Strict racial segregation” was employed by the late-1890s in Anniston. The "ideal city" outgrew its envisioned perfection by the early 20th century, yet marched on as a key commercial and manufacturing center.

Anniston kicked off the 1900s as one of the top industrial towns in Alabama. Anniston manufactured a diverse spectrum of products, from cotton textiles to locomotive brakes. The city garnered another, less-attractive nickname as “The Soil Pipe Capital of the World” for its steady sewer pipe production.

During both the First and Second World Wars, Fort McClellan drew thousands of new residents to Anniston. In 1943, a prisoner-of-war facility was constructed at the fort. During WWII, quarters were built for over 500,000 soldiers who came to Fort McClellan to train. Also during the war years, millions of dollars in revenue came streaming into Anniston from weapon-related purchases such as artillery shells and cartridge cases. Thousands came clamoring for employment at one of the town’s steel mills, foundries or at the newly constructed Anniston Army Depot, an ammunition warehouse located at the far edge of town. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, during the height of Cold War tensions, Anniston’s manufacturing and martial sectors expanded. The city’s population grew to more than 33,000 residents by the mid-1960s. The fort changed Anniston’s social rank and was a boon to its economic power. However, civil rights violence, economic loss, “environmental contamination” from an Anniston chemical factory, and finally the chemical-warfare weapons disposal at the Army Depot’s incinerator sent the once-quiet small town spinning in a different direction.

In May 1961, Anniston KKK members stopped and set fire to a bus transporting Congress of Racial Equality Freedom Riders. The group of activists, who were testing the waters of a U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated bus services along interstate bus routes, survived. The violent incident attracted worldwide infamy to Anniston. After another outbreak of racially motivated violence in Anniston, Mayor Claude Dear and his city commissioners began the “biracial Human Relations Council” to encourage improved race relationships and to lead the way to the inevitable desegregation of the city’s schools and work force. By 1965, legal segregation was banned in the “Model City of the New South.” Racial strife reared up again in Anniston in 1971. Members of both black and white communities created the Community of Unified Leadership. The organization helped to mend the racial unrest and inequality with job training services. The group also persuaded the downtown stores to employ African Americans in high-profile positions.

Honoring the city’s sensitive handling of its racial issues in the '60s and '70s, the National Civic League deemed Anniston an “All-American City.”

The 1980s and 1990s meant more trouble for Anniston. Looming on the horizon was the closure of Fort McClellan. There was a want of commercial and industrial diversity. PCB pollution from the Monsanto factory and the proposal of a “chemical weapons incinerator” at the Army Depot brought economic uncertainty to the town.

Today, the officials of Anniston still strive to repair its environmental problems and improve its economy. With an environmental clean-up and settled lawsuits with Monsanto/Solutia, Anniston, now with a population of about 24,000 continue to work for a better future.

Written by Kathleen Cooney

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Newspapers are The Anniston Star,
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Local Schools are Anniston High School, Gadsden State Community College