In the early and mid-1800s, the industrial age and a growing population created a high demand for raw materials to make products, especially wood and metals such as iron and lead. Our area had metal ore deposits to produce pig iron in locally owned furnaces fueled by wood charcoal and coke. Pig iron needed to be shipped to big cities like Chattanooga, where it was refined and made into metal products such as tools and farm implements. Our area also had vast forests to provide wood for a housing-hungry nation, but timbered logs needed to be shipped to large sawmills for processing into lumber, and again, Chattanooga was the closest place. Both pig iron and logwood were heavy and costly to transport long distances by wagon roads, and railroads didn’t come into play until almost the end of that century. The problem was resolved using another natural resource, rivers.