Site of Tassie Belle and Star and Cresent Iron Ore Furnaces

Anderson Blevins, an Alabama sewing-machine salesman, came to Cherokee County in the mid-1880s and was struck by the iron ore and by the foundry already running at the Rusk Penitentiary. In 1888 he took options on 20,000 acres, and lot sales began on October 12. The Tassie Belle, a fifty-ton blast furnace, was named for his wife. In 1893 an explosion and fire destroyed it, and almost 300 workers lost their jobs. On July 4, 1893, the Cherokee County Banner called the town dead. Furnace ruins survive in the woods.

What the plaque says

Site of Tassie Belle and Star and Cresent Iron Ore Furnaces New Birmingham was a boom town nearby in the late 1880s built around local iron ore operations. The furnaces, capable of producing 50 tons of iron daily, were named "Tassie Belle," after the wife of the town founder A. B. Bevins, and the "Star and Crescent." About 275 workmen were required to keep furnaces in continual operation. The town grew to over 3, 000 people with a business district of 15 blocks including 32 mercantile houses, an ice plant, the spacious Southern Hotel, bottling works, and an early electric power plant. The 1883 panic bankrupted the industries and killed the town. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 13 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.
• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 27 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.

More markers nearby

• James Stephen Hogg and Cherokee County — 1.5 mi
• Site of Rusk College — 1.9 mi
• Cook's Fort — 1.9 mi
• Rusk Footbridge — 2.0 mi