Elba is a city in and the county chair of Coffee County, Alabama, United States. It is the official seat, although there are two county courthouses, with the other one monster located in the town of Enterprise. At the era of the 2010 U.S. census, Elba’s population was 3,940. Elba is share of the Enterprise micropolitan statistical area.

The town which eventually became Elba originated near a ferry across the Pea River in the prematurely 1830s. Originally called Bridgeville, a U.S. post office was standard in the town by 1841. In 1851, a lottery to determine a extra name for the town was held. One citizen had been reading a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, and his instruction of “Elba” as its name was the winner in the same way as it was drawn from a hat before any of the other suggestions. Elba became the county seat of Coffee County in 1852.

A logging railroad first reached Elba upon March 20, 1892, with the first surviving rail line arriving in October 1898. The “Dorsey Trailer Company” was constructed at the end of this railroad line, and this company manufactured the highway trailers that served upon railroads and highways starting later the piggyback railroad or containerized cargo boom of the second half of the 20th century. The further railroad line the end in West Elba, where the “New Town” industrial section of the town was located. The Seaboard System Railroad ceased everything railroad foster to Elba, including freight service, on November 27, 1984.

The Pea River is an indispensable component of the archives of Elba. The river was originally called the Talakatchee River by the Creek Indians. (In the Creek language, talak means “pea”, and hatchee means “small river”.) The Pea River frequently flooded, causing great broken to the town. The Lincoln flood of 1865, named for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in the thesame year, was the first to destroy the town. Another devastating flood occurred in 1929 bearing in mind the river crested at a intensity of 43.5 feet (13.3 m) early on March 15. Airplanes were used to drop supplies to the certainly inundated town. There was and no-one else one death from the flood, an African-American man named “Phoe” Larkins. A child born at the Elba Hotel during this flood was named “Noah Tucker” after the biblical environment Noah. Vivian Harper customary the Theodore N. Vail Silver Medal for her audacious actions during the flood.