Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Nauvoo, AL

Nauvoo is a small incorporated town on the northwestern edge of Walker County, Alabama, that extends slightly north into southwestern Winston County.

The town grew out of isolated farming settlements on the Walker-Winston county line that were known unofficially as Blackwell's Crossing and Ingle Mills, after prominent local landowners.

Nauvoo was founded in 1888, during construction of the Northern Alabama Railway, and was formerly a center of coal mining.

Landowner Joshua Blackwell declined to have the new town named in his honor, so local resident Tom Carroll suggested the name "Nauvoo," after Nauvoo, Illinois, the city founded by Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, which Carroll had admired in his earlier travels.

By 1891, the Winston Herald was describing Nauvoo as "a flourishing town with three stores and one steam gin doing good business."

The town of Nauvoo incorporated in 1906.

Nauvoo's population peaked at 648 residents in 1930, during its coal-mining era, and has declined since; the 2020 census counted 185 residents.

The 2000 census recorded 284 people living in 116 households in the town.

Camp McDowell, the official camp and conference center of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, is located in Nauvoo.

Actor Pat Buttram, Gene Autry's Hollywood sidekick, spent part of his childhood and youth in Nauvoo, and Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Ben Sankey was born in the town in 1907.