Cherokee Bend

Cherokee Bend is a large subdivision and neighborhood in Mountain Brook which was developed on former Belcher Lumber Company property, north of Old Leeds Road, south of Shades Creek, east of Mountain Brook Club, and west of Irondale, beginning in 1963.

The subdivision, created by a group of developers incorporated as the Cherokee Bend Corporation, is known for its streets named after Civil War battles, and was once known as a neighborhood largely populated by mid-level executives from South Central Bell as the company established a regional headquarters in Birmingham just as the subdivision's 400+ homes were coming onto the market.

The original 200-acre Cherokee Bend tract is a small portion of Wallace McElwain's former Cahaba Iron Works property, but includes the site of the original blast furnace, which McElwain rebuilt after the Civil War and continued to operate until 1873, by which time most of the timber on his 2,146 acres had been cut to use for charcoal. Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company president George Crawford purchased the land in 1907 and allowed the forest to re-establish itself. After Robert Jemison Jr developed the new suburb of Mountain Brook to the west in 1927, he proposed that Crawford dedicate the furnace site as a public park. Its ruins are now accessible along Mountain Brook's Irondale Furnace Trail between Stone River Road and Old Leeds Road. Crawford sold the property to W. E. Belcher as a hardwood reserve for his Belcher Lumber Company in the 1930s. After Belcher's death in 1945 the land was tied up in competing claims from his heirs before it was established that the land belonged to the company, which was controlled by Brady Belcher.

Brady Belcher sold the land in several parcels to the Cherokee Bend Corporation.

References

• Stevenson, Edward (Spring 2019) "Mountain Brook's Cherokee Bend" The Jefferson Journal. No. 2, Jefferson County Historical Association, pp. 10–13