Ensley is a large city neighborhood in Jefferson County

Jefferson County, Alabama

Jefferson County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Alabama, with its county seat being located in Birmingham.As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the population of Jefferson County was 658,466...

, Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It was once a separate and thriving industrial city. It is part of the Birmingham–Hoover Metropolitan Area.
It was founded in 1886 by Memphis

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....

 entrepreneur, Enoch Ensley, as a new industrial city on the outskirts of a rapidly developing Birmingham (then just 15 years old) and directly adjacent to the Pratt coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

 seam. Zealously promoting and investing his own wealth in the project, Ensley soon attracted the interest of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company

Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company

The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company , 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...

 (TCI), which bought a controlling interest in the Ensley Land Company.