Bessemer, Industrial city in Jefferson County, Alabama.
Bessemer sits southwest of Birmingham in Alabama and stretches across flat to gently rolling terrain with residential neighborhoods grouped around former industrial zones. The city follows a grid pattern with older brick buildings along the main street and newer commercial and residential zones on the outskirts.
A land company founded the town in 1887 as a planned industrial city to take advantage of iron ore deposits and railway connections. Steel mills grew rapidly and shaped the local economy for over a century until many plants closed in the late 1900s.
The name honors a British inventor who developed a method for steel production. This industrial legacy still shows in street names and the layout of older residential blocks around former plant sites.
Interstate highways and a main road cross the city from east to west while smaller streets run north and south. Visitors can walk around central blocks but will need a car to reach outlying areas.
A restaurant downtown opened its doors over a century ago and still serves meals in the same building. Some of the older city blocks preserve street lamps and sidewalk slabs from the early steel production era.
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