The mine closes
Thirty four years of work stopped inside a single year. A United Mine Workers strike and a worldwide collapse in coal prices shut the Brookside mine in 1920, and although the strike was settled in 1921 the mine never went back to work. Sloss had already moved on. It opened a by-product coke plant in North Birmingham that same year and took the Brookside ovens apart, and the photographic record the Library of Congress holds of what was left is most of what there is to look at now. Graysville lost something different, and lost it for a different reason. Alabama revoked its charter in 1927 on the grounds of inactivity, and for the next eighteen years there was no town government there at all. The one thing that arrived rather than left in this decade arrived late. Alabama Power brought electricity to Brookside in 1927, seven years after the mine that built the town had already closed.
What happened, and when
—- 1920BrooksideCoal
The mine closes and never reopens
A United Mine Workers strike and a worldwide collapse in coal prices shut the Brookside mine in 1920. The strike was settled in 1921 and the mine never went back to work.
- 1920BrooksideCoal
The ovens come down
Sloss opened a by-product coke plant in North Birmingham in 1920 and took the Brookside ovens apart. The Library of Congress holds a photographic record of what was left.
- 1924BrooksideTown life
Hollywood comes to the mine
Famous Players-Lasky shot part of Coming Through at Brookside in 1924, a picture made from Jack Bethea’s mining novel Bed Rock. Thomas Meighan, Lila Lee and Wallace Beery stayed with families in the town while they worked.
- 1927GraysvilleGovernment
The state pulls the charter
Alabama revoked Graysville's charter in 1927 on the grounds of inactivity. For the next eighteen years there was no town government here.
- 1927BrooksideTown life
The lights come on
Alabama Power brought electricity to Brookside in 1927, seven years after the mine that built the town had closed.
Nothing is recorded here for Cardiff in these years. If you know something that belongs in it, send it along and it will go in with your name on the source line.
Every entry above carries the source it came from, and these are those sources in full. All of it is public material found online, so anything here can be followed back and checked. It also means that where this chapter says something is not recorded, what that really says is that it has not turned up in any of these, which is a smaller claim. If you know better, and somebody reading this probably does, it would be good to hear from you.