New Union, AL

New Union is an Etowah County census-designated place in northeast Alabama, within the Gadsden metropolitan area. The 2020 census counted 1,019 residents. The CDP covers about 12.3 square miles and is rural by Census classification, so its houses and roads spread across a county landscape instead of gathering around a municipal downtown. Etowah County schools serve local children, while Gadsden supplies the county seat, larger shopping, medical care, and many regional jobs. New Union’s everyday geography is the space between those services and the homes along the county roads.

There is no mayor or town council here because a CDP is a statistical place, not an incorporated municipality. The name still appears on maps, school records, postal addresses, and local road signs, giving a dispersed area a shared address. Etowah County’s larger history reaches from Cherokee homelands and the county’s 1866 formation to the industrial cities along the Coosa River. New Union belongs to that rural side of the county, where the county school system and nearby towns provide the civic structure that a city government would otherwise supply.