Bessemer County

Bessemer County was a proposed new county to be created by ceding 385 square miles in the western part of Jefferson County (the "Bessemer Cut-Off") along with 127 square miles of eastern Tuscaloosa County, 41 square miles of southeastern Walker County, 30 square miles of northeastern Bibb County and 23 square miles of northern Shelby County.

When proposed in 1900, the new county would have had an area of 607 square miles and a population of more than 35,000 people. The S. E. Jones Company, a real estate business with offices in Bessemer's Rebie Hall Block, was active in promoting the idea by publishing pamphlets and lobbying the Alabama State Legislature. They argued that the people living in the Bessemer area were paying "a large proportion of taxes" to Jefferson County, but "not getting our prorate of the public improvements," and cited the "democratic principle of home rule."