If the twice-annual time changes throw you off balance, imagine the confusion in the four Alabama towns that use Eastern time, voluntarily, all year ’round.

Most of us learn in school that the entire State of Alabama is located in the Central Time Zone, and that’s true according to the federal government, which set standard time zones in 1918.

But at some unknown point in history, four Alabama cities unofficially agreed to use Eastern time, which is an hour later than the rest of the state and on the same time as Georgia and other East Coast states. Those cities are Phenix City, population 38,441; Valley, population 10,308; Lanett, population 6,751; and Smiths Station, population 5,384. In Valley, that includes the campus of Southern Union State Community College, which has numerous students who attend from surrounding cities, which has been known to cause confusion about what time classes start.

These cities border the Chattahoochee River and the state of Georgia.

Why did residents agree to be on a different time zone than the rest of the state? Because of their jobs.

Until the 1990s, the area’s largest employer was the grouping of West Point Pepperell textile mills. The company began with two cotton mills in the aftermath of the Civil War and grew from there. Eventually, the majority of the mills were located in Alabama but the corporate offices were located in West Point, Ga., which was in the Eastern time zone. Residents from both states, all located in the Columbus, GA-AL, Metro Area, worked in the Alabama mills.

The exact year is unknown but the towns’ governments eventually came to a consensus to use Eastern time, confirmed Valley City Clerk Kathy Snowden.

In the 1990s, the mills fell on hard times. “Gradually… the textile mills closed, and employment shrank,” wrote historian Robin Watson in an article on the Encyclopedia of Alabama. “Lower-cost products manufactured overseas by companies that paid very low wages cut into domestic production. In 1996, the Riverdale Mill, which dated to 1866, closed.”

The majority of the mills were no longer in operation by the 2000s, but the time zones remain unchanged.

Snowden said there is often talk by residents in the area about changing to the Central Time Zone but nothing official is in the works.