The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (1852–1952), also known as TCI and the Tennessee Company, was a major American steel manufacturer with interests in coal and iron ore mining and railroad operations. Originally based entirely within Tennessee, it relocated most of its business to Alabama in the late nineteenth century, following protests over its use of free convict labor. With a sizable real estate portfolio, the company owned several Birmingham satellite towns, including Ensley, Fairfield, Docena, Edgewater and Bayview. It also established a coal mining camp it sold to U.S. Steel which developed it into the Westfield, Alabama planned community. At one time the second largest steel producer in the United States, TCI was listed on the first Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896. However, in 1907, the company was merged with its principal rival, the United States Steel Corporation. The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company was subsequently operated as a subsidiary of U. S. Steel for 45 years until it became a division of its parent company in 1952. History Early history The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company was founded as the Sewanee Furnace Company, a small mining concern established in 1852 by Nashville entrepreneurs seeking to exploit Tennessee's rich coal reserves and the 19th century railroad boom. After losing money, the business was sold to New York investors in 1859 and reorganized as the Tennessee Coal and Rail Company, but the outbreak of the Civil War the following year saw the fleeting company repossessed by local creditors. It became Tennessee's leading coal extractor over the next decade, mining and transporting coal around the towns of Cowan and Tracy City in the Cumberland Mountains, and soon branched out into coke manufacture. This practice of both extracting and moving coal to market by building private rail tracks was not unusual at the time, as by owning the tracks that served their mines, businesses could undercut rivals at market by saving money on transportation. A Thomas O'Connor purchased the company in 1876 and expanded the business into iron manufacture in order to stimulate coke sales, building a blast furnace near Cowan. The business was subsequently renamed the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. TCI never again changed its name, despite its later expansion into Alabama following the 1886 purchase of the Birmingham-based Pratt Coal and Iron Company. As the company grew in the post-Civil War era, it made