24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Pell City, AL

Pell City is a city in St. Clair County in north-central Alabama and is one of the county's two county seats, the other being Ashville in the northern part of the county.

For many years St. Clair County was the only county in the United States with two full-service county seats, a distinction created because residents of the southern part of the county struggled to travel over the mountains to reach Ashville.

Pell City was founded in 1890 by railroad investors and named for George H. Pell of the Pell City Iron and Land Company, a financial backer of the town.

The city was incorporated on May 6, 1891, but it nearly failed during the Panic of 1893, and the 1900 census counted only 98 residents.

Pell City was revived after Sumter Cogswell purchased the principal townsite acreage in 1901 for $3,000 and built the Pell City Manufacturing Company textile mill in 1902.

The mill was bought by Avondale Mills in 1919 and operated as the town's industrial landmark for more than a century, until a Tennessee company bought the complex and began dismantling it in 2008; the Avondale Mill Historic District preserves its legacy.

Pell City first gained county-seat status in the early 1900s, lost it in 1905 when the Alabama Supreme Court upheld a ban on dual county seats, and regained it in 1907 through an amendment to the state constitution.

The city grew in 1956 when the nearby towns of Eden and Oak Ridge were merged into Pell City.

The completion of Logan Martin Dam in 1964 created Logan Martin Lake on the Coosa River, giving Pell City 275 miles of shoreline and turning the city into a center for fishing, boating and lakeside homes; the lake is nicknamed the 'Lake of a Thousand Coves.'

Lakeside Park and the Pell City Civic Center anchor the city's recreation offerings on the shore of Logan Martin Lake.