The following information is provided by historian Vicki George Kes.
Cold Water Bridge, built by the AGS railroad over its tracks under the road of the same name in 1898 in Woodstock, is the second-oldest such bridge in continuous use in Alabama
Burns said Woodstock was first settled in the 1820s by Englishman William Houston and is named after the village of the same name in Great Britain, where some of the first settlers came from.
“It was settled near where the stagecoach lines to Huntsville and to Tuscaloosa crossed,” he said.
The first post office was established in 1855 (there is a brand new one now on Alabama 5). The community later coalesced a short distance away from the stagecoach lines when the intersecting AGS and L&N railroads and their two depots were built.
“Woodstock started off over near where Green Pond [to the east] was, but moved over [north of Alabama 5] when the railroads came in,” Burns said. “Now we’re moving back over near [U.S. 11], where we originally started out.
In the late 19th century, the community, with coal and iron ore deposits nearby, was the home of a pig iron blast furnace established by Welshman Giles Edwards, but that enterprise failed in the Depression of 1893, Burns said.
The town also had a newspaper, called the Monitor, in the mid-1800s that moved to Six Mile, between Centreville and Montevallo, before ending up in Birmingham, where it eventually became The Birmingham News, he said.
“There was also a old hotel and several mansions here, but we’ve had five major fires over the years and there’s none of that left now,” Burns added.
Woodstock Community Library 