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When Hernando deSoto arrived in the village of Coosa in 1540, the population was between 30,000 and 40,000. On his departure from Coosa, deSoto left two men behind—giving us the claim of being the oldest continuously occupied city. He also left behind diseases that the native Americans had not been exposed to and many of them died because of this exposure.

In 1814 General Andrew Jackson traveled from Talladega through Childersburg to Fayetteville where he set up his camp and then continued on to the battle at Horseshoe Bend. Jackson sent his wounded and dead soldiers back to the camp in Fayetteville. The monument for the Fort Williams cemetery is there today as a memorial for the Tennessee volunteers who lost their lives in this battle.

In 1887 President Grover Cleveland and his wife made a whistle stop in Childersburg to visit with Mrs. Cleveland’s relatives, the Clietts.

The theory to how Childersburg got its name is told by Annie Ryder Bush in her memoirs. According to her, five of the local townsmen-four of whom were named John-decided that their village would be named Johnstown. One of the Johns, a Mr. Childers, beat the others to Montgomery and named the village Childersburg. Childersburg was not incorporated until 1889.

In 1941 the war department built the Alabama  Ordinance Works in Childersburg. The population grew from 500 to 15000 in one year. Housing was a big problem and men lived in chicken coups and coal houses. These people played a big part in World War II. Not only were powder munitions made at the AOW but also the heavy water that was used in the atomic bomb. In the late 1990’s the state department donated the AOW  property to the city for an industrial park.