Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Sheffield, AL

Sheffield is a city in Colbert County, Alabama, on the south bank of the Tennessee River, and one of the Quad Cities of the Florence–Muscle Shoals metropolitan area known as The Shoals.

Sheffield was founded and incorporated on February 17, 1885, by Alfred Huger Moses, who became its first mayor, and it was named for Sheffield, England, in honor of its iron-making ambitions.

The Sheffield site began as York Bluff, laid out in 1820 on land that Andrew Jackson and John Coffee had bought through the Cypress Land Company in 1816; Moses's group bought 2,700 acres in 1883 after iron ore and limestone were found nearby.

The 2020 census counted 9,403 people in Sheffield, living in 4,255 households, with 4,977 housing units in the city.

Sheffield was a Tennessee River embarkation point during the Trail of Tears, at the site of what is now the Spring Creek boat launch.

In October 1917, President Woodrow Wilson selected Sheffield as the site of a World War I ammonium nitrate plant, and in 1940 Reynolds Metals opened its first aluminum smelting facility in the city.

Sheffield is home to Muscle Shoals Sound Studio at 3614 Jackson Highway — later at 1000 Alabama Avenue — where the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Cher, Bob Seger, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Staple Singers recorded some of their biggest hits.

Sheffield is sometimes called the "City of Senators" because U.S. Senators Howell Heflin, Mitch McConnell, and Fred Thompson were all born there, as were songwriter Arthur Alexander and French horn player Willie Ruff.

Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield was built in 1921 as Colbert County Hospital and renamed for Keller in 1979; her birthplace, Ivy Green, is less than a mile away in neighboring Tuscumbia.

Sheffield's Riverfront Park on Pickwick Lake offers boating and fishing on the Tennessee River.