24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Parrish, AL

Parrish is an incorporated town in the center of Walker County in northwestern Alabama, covering about 2.1 square miles of land.

The community was originally called Hewitt, and it was granted a post office under that name in 1878.

Parrish took its current name from the telegraph station established about 1890 by the Sheffield, Birmingham and Tennessee Railroad, whose telegraph operator was a man named Parrish; the name was officially adopted on January 1, 1891.

Parrish was incorporated in the early 1920s, with sources giving 1921 and October 1922 as the incorporation date.

Coal mining built Parrish: the Southern Railroad's Railroad Fuel Company opened a coal mine near the town in 1918, drawing hundreds of miners and their families to settle there before the mine closed in 1951.

The Alabama Power Company built a coal-fired electrical generation plant near Parrish in 1917, a plant later renamed Plant Gorgas.

Parrish's population peaked at 1,742 residents in the 1970 census, and the 2020 census counted 982 residents, exactly the same total as in 2010.

At the 2000 census, Parrish had 1,268 people living in 506 households.

Parrish Elementary School and Parrish High School, both part of the Walker County Board of Education, are located in the town, and the high school first opened in 1925.

A long-track EF3 tornado struck Parrish on April 24, 2010, before moving on toward Cordova and Empire.