The Buffalo River runs over a hard ledge of bedded chert at this crossing, and a firm bottom in a river was worth a great deal to anyone driving stock or a loaded wagon. Frontier travellers are said to have called a stone-surfaced road a metalled road, and the Park Service takes the ford's name from that. It was not an easy crossing in all weathers. Alexander Wilson, the ornithologist, came through in 1811 and wrote that he was roused from a melancholy reverie by the roaring of Buffalo River, which he forded with great difficulty. The 1816 treaty with the Chickasaw granted the square mile around it to John McClish, who built a forge at the ford about 1818. Crossings like this one decided where the old road went.
By about 1820 there was a charcoal-fired blast furnace on the site, known as Steele's Iron Works, making pig iron from ore dug in the hills behind. Water was taken from the river along a cut channel, a millrace, to drive the machinery that blew air into the burning charcoal. McClish was in financial trouble by 1822 and the sheriff of Lawrence County sold his land to satisfy judgements against him, the first of many changes of hand. Iron was made at the ford until 1892, when the works moved half a mile away to a larger stack. What is left is a slag heap and the line of the millrace, still legible as a ditch across the bottom land.
Getting there
35.4670, -87.4714
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
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