Wayfarrow

Furnace Hill

Ghost town · Colbert County, Alabama

Muscle Shoals quadrangle, USGS topographic map (1916, 1:62,500)
Muscle Shoals quadrangle, USGS topographic map (1916, 1:62,500) · U.S. Geological Survey, Historical Topographic Map Collection · Public domain

Furnace Hill is a ghost town in Colbert County, Alabama. It is one of 27 former communities in Colbert County on the federal names register. That ranks the county 5th among the 53 Alabama counties with a vanished settlement on record.

The U.S. Geological Survey lists Furnace Hill as a historical populated place on the Florence topographic quadrangle: the name is no longer in official use for a community, whether the settlement was abandoned, absorbed into a neighbouring town or renamed. The recorded location is 34.7556° N, 87.7056° W.

Key facts

USGS quadrangleFlorence
Elevation483 ft
Nearest living townSheffield, AL
Distance to it0.5 miles
GNIS feature ID132889
Coordinates34.75564, -87.70559

Open the location on a map

Then and now

Drag the slider: the old USGS map on the left, the same ground from the air today on the right. Both cover the same 1.9-mile square centred on the recorded location.

Furnace Hill today, aerial view
Muscle Shoals quadrangle, USGS topographic map (1916, 1:62,500)

Left: Muscle Shoals quadrangle, USGS topographic map (1916, 1:62,500), U.S. Geological Survey, Historical Topographic Map Collection. Right: The same ground today: NAIP aerial imagery, USDA Farm Service Agency, National Agriculture Imagery Program (via USGS). Both public domain.

What's there now

Furnace Hill is no longer a community in its own right. The nearest living town is Sheffield, AL (population 9,334), about 0.5 miles away in a straight line, and the site sits at roughly 483 feet above sea level. The aerial view above shows what covers the ground today. Much of the land around former townsites is private; check access before you visit.

Nearby places

Questions

Where is Furnace Hill?

Furnace Hill is in Colbert County, Alabama, at 34.7556, -87.7056.

How many ghost towns are in Colbert County?

Colbert County, Alabama has 27 ghost towns on record at Wayfarrow.

Sources and licences

Facts marked "approximately" carry an uncertain date in the source. Text on this page is generated from the sources above; no encyclopedia prose is copied. Last updated 2026-11-05.