Les Jones

East Tennessee > How Tapoco, Hall Road, Hunt Road, and Calderwood Street in Alcoa Got Their Names

Yesterday was Maryville history, so today it's Alcoa history. Alcoa, Tennessee was originally a company town created ex nihilo by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). Last night I found out a little about where some of Alcoa's place names and street names came from.

Hall Road was almost certainly named for Charles Martin Hall, inventor of a process for refining aluminum, and Hunt Road is definitely named for Alfred E. Hunt, an investor who helped create what later became ALCOA:

Essentially the same, less expensive process for smelting aluminum from bauxite co-discovered by Charles Martin Hall in 1886 is in use worldwide today.

The Hall-Héoult process dissolves alumina in molten cryolite, a mineral. An electric current passes through the solution, depositing molten aluminum on the carbon lining of the crucible. This electrolytic reduction process is basically the same used in refining today.

Hall had trouble selling his process. Finally, a friend introduced him to Captain Alfred E. Hunt (for whom Hunt Road is named), a metallurgist and co-owner of the Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory. He persuaded a group of Pittsburgh steel men to join him in pledging $20,000 to form The Pittsburgh Reduction Company on July 31, 1888.

ALCOA named other roads for inventors and scientists, including Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, James Prescott Joule, and the Curies. That comes in part from the company's engineering bent, but it also reflects a scientific idealism from the early part of the twentieth century. You come across it, for instance, in the literature of polar exploration, with its energetic view of science as a way for mankind to cast off its superstitions and expand its horizons.

ALCOA was originally the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, in reference to the chemical reduction in the refining process. The word reduction was also used to refer to rendering animal fat, so the name was changed to Aluminum Company of America. The acronym soon followed.

The company constructed a village in the mountains of Blount County as a residence for workers constructing dams to generate power for the plant. The village was originally called Alcoa, but was re-named Calderwood in honor of Isaac Glidden Calderwood, superintendent of dam construction. The community of Calderwood still exists on Hwy. 129. Calderwood Rd. in front of Midland Shopping Center is likewise named for I.G. Calderwood.

Alcoa built the Tapoco Lodge to house visiting company officials and provide a meeting place for company functions. There's an interesting story around its name, which despite the sound isn't based on an Indian name:

Tapoco was first called Cheoah but soon after the construction of the dam started in early 1916, the name was changed to Tapoco to avoid confusion with Cheoah on Sweetwater Creek. The name Tapoco was coined by using the first two letters of Tallassee Power Company and was the $25.00 winner's prize in a contest.

Tapoco is still open. Melissa and I stopped in one time when we were passing over 129 and fell in love with the place.