Col. Chick Wann and Chief E. J. Martin Interview - excerpts from April, 1985

This TVA Police and Fire Station was located at Nitrate Plant No. 1:
From L to R: Chief E. J. Martin, L.L. Stanford, W.L. Butler, S.L. Rogers, John Duncan, John R. Stewart, McMurray, Smith, Jones, G.O. Stewart, W.G. Stanford, Joe Horton, M. Sanderson, Y.J. Clark, Louie Clemons and Nick Fago

This TVA Police and Fire Station was located at Nitrate Plant No. 1. 

E. J. Martin (first in the photo), was the former Chief of the Public Safety Service at TVA. He came to Sheffield in February 1918 in the midst of the flu epidemic. 

He was witness to the construction of the Village and “saw it go from cisterns and cornfields up to where it is today. I’d never seen so many carpenters in my life!” 

He lived at 400 Watts Bar and died in 1993, aged 94. 

Before The Village was constructed, it was farmland. There was a streetcar line along old Cherokee Pike (now Blackwell Rd.), that would run to Tuscumbia and Florence. 

He was interviewed by Colonel Chick Wann in April 1985. You can read the full transcript here or in the book, Sheffield: History and Recollections - The Journal of Muscle Shoals History, Vol XVIII (Available through the Tennessee Valley Historical Society or at the local library).

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