Cordova is located in central Walker County, in the north-
central part of the state. It has a mayor/council form of
government. Doyle Alexander, former major league baseball
pitcher, was born in Cordova. Early settlers came to the area
now comprising Cordova in the early 1830s. By 1840, the first
coal mine, long a sustaining part of the local economy, was
opened. The town was originally called Dent, after an early
local family. In 1859, Benjamin Long established a store in the
area and built a number of rental houses, and a community began
to grow up around the store. Long, a veteran of the Mexican-
American War, dubbed the town El Cordova; the "El" was later
dropped. The name has several possible meanings, as a variant of
the Spanish word "Cordoba," including being the name of a town
in southern Spain and of Spanish explorer Francisco Fernandez de
Cordova, the first European traveler to the Yucatán Peninsula.
The first post office opened in 1884, and the Kansas City,
Memphis, and Birmingham Railroad (later th