Lodge Cast Iron and the Tennessee Town Where the Skillets Are Made

Go and look at the bottom of your skillet. If it says Lodge, and there is a very good chance it does, it was cast in a town of about three thousand people on the Tennessee River, 25 minutes west of Chattanooga, where the same family has been pouring iron since 1896.

South Pittsburg is not a big place. It has a main street, a clock, a river bridge and a foundry that has outlasted almost every competitor American manufacturing ever had. Most people driving I-24 have no idea it is there.

Quick facts

• Where: South Pittsburg, TN (Marion County), about 25 minutes west of Chattanooga
• Lodge Museum of Cast Iron: In the flagship store at 220 E 3rd St
• Hours and admission: Check current hours and prices on Lodge’s website before you go. South Pittsburg is on Central Time.
• Time needed: About an hour in the museum, another to shop and eat
• Foundry tours: None. The working foundry is not open to the public, so the museum is how you see the story.
• Biggest weekend: The National Cornbread Festival, late April

Why here

The short answer is geography. South Pittsburg sat where the raw materials, the river and the railroad met. The town was even named in the hope it would become an industrial center like its Pennsylvania namesake. That did not happen at the scale the founders imagined, but one foundry took hold and stayed.

Lodge was founded in 1896 and has been family-run ever since. It came through the collapse of nearly every other American cast iron manufacturer and the decades when everyone decided nonstick was the future, and out the other side into a period where a well-seasoned skillet is a minor cultural object. Lodge is now one of the very few consumer brands you can still point at and say that it is made here, in that building, by people who live in this town.

The Lodge Museum of Cast Iron

The museum sits inside the flagship store and covers the foundry’s history. It shows how iron is cast, what the process looked like in 1896 compared with now, and the long arc of a company that survived by not changing very much.

Plan on about an hour. Check hours and admission on Lodge’s website before you drive in. There is also a restaurant inside the building, which makes it a reasonable lunch stop and more than a fifteen-minute detour.

The factory store and the seconds

The original factory store opened in 1994 next to the foundries for one purpose, which was selling factory seconds, the pans with a cosmetic flaw that could not go out at full price. It has since expanded to carry the full line, but the seconds are still the reason people make the drive.

A “second” here typically means a small blemish in the casting that has no effect on how the pan cooks for the next sixty years. If you have ever wanted a Dutch oven and balked at the price, this is the errand.

The National Cornbread Festival

One weekend in late April, a town of three thousand absorbs many times its own population. The National Cornbread Festival takes over downtown South Pittsburg with a cook-off, a carnival, craft booths, music and, as advertised, a very large amount of cornbread.

It is fun and it is crowded. If you want to come for it, book lodging months ahead. This is the one weekend a year when rooms across Marion County run out.

Make an afternoon of the town

The museum and store take about two hours. The rest of downtown is worth another one.

• Walk Cedar Avenue. Antique shops, a few gift stores and a small-town main street that still has its original buildings.
• Eat locally. Stevarino’s Italian Eatery & Pub on South Cedar is a long-standing local favorite. Check its hours before you go. The South Pittsburg restaurant list has the rest.
• Look at the river. The bridge and the bluffs behind town are the reason the foundry is here in the first place.
• Add the bat cave. The Nickajack Cave bat emergence is near South Pittsburg and happens at sunset, a good way to end the day.

South Pittsburg also pairs well with Foster Falls in the morning. Cabins, campgrounds and hotels are all within about 25 minutes.