Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Elba, AL

Elba is an incorporated city in western Coffee County in southeast Alabama and is the official county seat of Coffee County, although the county maintains a second courthouse in Enterprise, about 25 miles east.

Elba is nicknamed 'The City of Flowing Wells.'

The town originated in the early 1830s near a ferry across the Pea River and was originally called Bridgeville; a United States post office was established there by 1841, and the name was changed to Bentonville in 1850.

In December 1851 the town's citizens chose a new name by drawing suggestions from a hat, and 'Elba' — after the Mediterranean island to which Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled — was the name selected; it became official in 1852.

Elba became the county seat of Coffee County in 1852 and was incorporated on April 13, 1853.

Elba sits at the confluence of Whitewater Creek and the Pea River — a river the Creek Indians called the Talakatchee — and its location has made flooding a defining part of the town's history.

The first great flood to destroy Elba was the 'Lincoln flood' of 1865, and another devastating flood struck in 1929, when the Pea River crested at 43.5 feet; a levee was built around the town in 1930.

The worst flood in Elba's recorded history came on March 17, 1990, when the Pea River crested at 48 feet, a levee broke, and the entire town lay under water for four days; further serious floods followed in 1994 and 1998 before the Army Corps of Engineers built a new levee with flood gates in the early 2000s.

The 2020 census counted 3,508 people in Elba, and the 2010 census recorded 3,940 people living in 1,547 households, including 991 families.

Elba covers about 15.4 square miles and is part of the Enterprise micropolitan statistical area.