Coke Ovens - West Blocton Park

I came across this great little park on the way back from the Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge, about 45 minutes southwest of Birmingham, AL. The West Blocton Coke Ovens Park combines ruins, history, and nature – perfect! It is a free park where you can roam and explore at will. There are facilities (restrooms, a large picnic pavilion, and a playground), but the highlight is the coke ovens themselves interwoven with trails and boardwalks.

Beehive coke oven interior. The extreme heat created a glaze on the bricks.

The trails include instructive signs covering the history and technology of this Cahaba Coal Company facility which was built in 1887 and produced coke from coal mined nearby.  The coal was loaded into the tops of the beehive block ovens and heated to 2800 °F to remove impurities, leaving the better burning, almost pure carbon, coke for use in the iron and steel industry.

Rail cars were used on top of the oven rows for loading the coal, as well as between the rows for moving the finished coke.

Coke ovens rail car on display in the park

View between rows from the elevated boardwalk

Interior of another coke oven with the top-loading hole visible

Lower boardwalk

One side of a double-sided row of ovens

The four rows of ovens (two double-sided and two single-sided) could produce 600 tons of coke per day. The facility only ran at capacity for about 20 years and there are no records of production after 1909. The 467 ovens are now in various states of ruin.

Bricks have fallen from the ceiling of this oven

End-buttresses on the south side of the facility

Unfortunately, in the 1980’s many of the end-buttress stones were removed from the north side of the facility to reconstruct an iron furnace at the historic Tannehill Ironworks. This has contributed to the degradation of the ovens, along with the many trees now growing on top of them.

Collapsed ovens on the north side of the facility

Walking through the park and getting a close-up look at these historic ruins is so much fun!