Red Mountain (Birmingham, Alabama)
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Red Mountain is a long
ridge A ridge is a long, narrow, elevated geomorphologic landform, structural feature, or a combination of both separated from the surrounding terrain by steep sides. The sides of a ridge slope away from a narrow top, the crest or ridgecrest, wi ...
running southwest-northeast and dividing Jones Valley from Shades Valley south of
Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Jefferson County, Alabama, Jefferson County. The population was 200,733 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List ...
. It is part of the Ridge-and-Valley region of the
Appalachian Mountains The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, are a mountain range in eastern to northeastern North America. The term "Appalachian" refers to several different regions associated with the mountain range, and its surrounding terrain ...
. The Red Mountain Formation of hard
Silurian The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 23.5 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the third and shortest period of t ...
rock strata lies exposed in several long crests, and was named "Red Mountain" because of the rust-stained rock faces and prominent seams of red
hematite Hematite (), also spelled as haematite, is a common iron oxide compound with the formula, Fe2O3 and is widely found in rocks and soils. Hematite crystals belong to the rhombohedral lattice system which is designated the alpha polymorph of . ...
iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the f ...
. The mountain was the site of several mines that supplied iron ore to Birmingham's iron furnaces. Most of Birmingham's television and radio stations have transmission towers located on Red Mountain. Red Mountain is also home to Red Mountain Park, one of the largest urban parks in the United States at .


History

The proximity of Red Mountain's ore to nearby sources of coal and limestone was the impetus to develop and promote the
Birmingham District The Birmingham District is a geological area in the vicinity of Birmingham, Alabama, where the raw materials for making steel - limestone, iron ore, and coal - are found together in abundance. The district includes Red Mountain, Jones Valley, and ...
as an industrial site. The mining of iron ore along Red Mountain began in the early 1860s as the Civil War created a demand for iron necessary to sustain the Confederate war efforts. The Union army destroyed the Oxmoor, Irondale and Tannehill furnaces in 1865 and at this point mining stopped along Red Mountain. After the Civil War the production of iron was again being renewed but this time on a commercial level. Under the leadership of such men as Debardeleben, Sloss, and Woodward the mining of iron ore along Red Mountain began again. The mountain developed a symbolic place as the source of wealth in the region and was even portrayed as a character in
pageant Pageant(s) or The Pageant(s) may refer to: Events * Procession or ceremony in elaborate costume * Beauty pageant, or beauty contest * List of pageants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints * Medieval pageant, a narrative medieval pro ...
s sponsored by the steel companies in their
company town A company town is a place where all or most of the stores and housing in the town are owned by the same company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schoo ...
s. In the Altamont and Redmont areas the abandoned mine sites served as the locations for large estates and upper-class developments which offered cool breezes and a panoramic view of the growing industrial city from above the constant layer of thick black smoke. Alex Harvey "Rick" Woodward's home is in this area along Altamont Road. His home is now owned and maintained by the
University of Alabama at Birmingham The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is a public research university in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. Founded in 1969 and part of the University of Alabama System, UAB has grown to be the state's largest employer, with more than ...
and used as the residence of the University president. As the steel furnaces modernized, labor cost rose, and geological faults in the local ore mines made the ore harder to reach, it became more economical to purchase pelletized ore from distant sources than to continue mining ore from Red Mountain. The last ore mine on Red Mountain closed in 1962 and was operated by US Steel. The last ore mine in the Birmingham district closed in 1972. It was the
Pyne Mine The Pyne Mine was a vertical shaft iron ore mine operated by the Woodward Iron Company and located near the Lacey's Chapel community outside Bessemer, Alabama, in Shades Valley. It was, along with Woodward's Songo Mine, one of only two shaft ...
off Highway 150 near Bessemer and was operated by the Woodward Iron Company. In 1938, the giant cast-iron statue of the Roman god of the forge, Vulcan, which represented Birmingham in the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair was put on display atop a sandstone tower built by the
Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...
. This is the world's largest cast-iron statue. Red Mountain serves as a natural promontory for Birmingham's radio and television broadcast stations, and a setting for noteworthy private restaurant "The Club."


Red Mountain Expressway Cut

In 1970, the "Red Mountain Expressway" was completed after many years of work cutting through Red Mountain. This highway linked Birmingham with its southern suburbs and spurred suburban growth towards the south of Birmingham. The resultant cut exposed geological strata spanning millions of years, including the red ore seam that spurred Birmingham's development. A new species of Lower Silurian (middle
Llandovery Llandovery (; ) is a market town and community (Wales), community in Carmarthenshire, Wales. It lies on the River Tywi and at the junction of the A40 road, A40 and A483 road, A483 roads, about north-east of Carmarthen, north of Swansea and w ...
)
phacops ''Phacops'' is a genus of trilobites in the order Phacopida, family Phacopidae, that lived in Europe, northwestern Africa, North and South America and China from the Late Ordovician until the very end of the Devonian, with a broader time range ...
id
trilobite Trilobites (; meaning "three-lobed entities") are extinction, extinct marine arthropods that form the class (biology), class Trilobita. One of the earliest groups of arthropods to appear in the fossil record, trilobites were among the most succ ...
, ''Acaste birminghamensis'', was first collected from exposures on Red MountainB. S. Norford
"''Acaste birminghamensis'', a new lower Silurian trilobite from Alabama"
''Journal of Paleontology''; May 1972; v. 46; no. 3; p. 348-352


Neighborhood

There are many neighborhoods that are located along the 33 miles of Red Mountain, that stretches from Sparks Gap on the southwest to Trussville in the northeast. Some of these are Raimund, Muscoda, Lipscomb, Wenonah, Ishkooda, Greensprings, Irondale, Ruffner, and Trussville. Located just southeast of downtown Birmingham, on Red Mountain, is Redmont Park, which was developed in the 1920s by Robert Jemison. It was the home to Birmingham's early bankers and iron and steel industrialists. It became one of Birmingham's most prominent neighborhoods, home to the majority of the multimillion-dollar residences and estates that are located within the city proper. The prestigious
Altamont School The Altamont School, located in Birmingham, Alabama atop Red Mountain, is a college preparatory day school with coeducational enrollment of grades 5– 12. Most of the students live in Birmingham and the surrounding communities. History Altamo ...
, a private school well known for its arts and science programs, is located in the neighborhood, as well as Saint Rose Academy, a Catholic
parochial school A parochial school is a private school, private Primary school, primary or secondary school affiliated with a religious organization, and whose curriculum includes general religious education in addition to secular subjects, such as science, mathem ...
run by Dominican sisters.


Red Mountain Museum

A science museum, the Red Mountain Museum, was opened on the slope adjacent to the cut in 1971. Interpretive signage was installed along one of the terraces of the cut and guardrails and fencing installed to allow museum visitors to inspect the exposed rock close-up. From the late 1970s until 1994, the Red Mountain Museum was quite active in
paleontological Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...
research, collecting fossil
vertebrate Vertebrates () are animals with a vertebral column (backbone or spine), and a cranium, or skull. The vertebral column surrounds and protects the spinal cord, while the cranium protects the brain. The vertebrates make up the subphylum Vertebra ...
s and
invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...
s from hundreds of localities throughout the state. The staff collected and cataloged tens of thousands of fossils, including many
Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...
mosasaur Mosasaurs (from Latin ''Mosa'' meaning the 'Meuse', and Ancient Greek, Greek ' meaning 'lizard') are an extinct group of large aquatic reptiles within the family Mosasauridae that lived during the Late Cretaceous. Their first fossil remains wer ...
s,
Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...
ground sloth Ground sloths are a diverse group of extinct sloths in the mammalian superorder Xenarthra. They varied widely in size with the largest, belonging to genera '' Lestodon'', ''Eremotherium'' and ''Megatherium'', being around the size of elephants. ...
s, and primitive
Eocene The Eocene ( ) is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (Ma). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes ...
archaeocete
whales Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully Aquatic animal, aquatic placental mammal, placental marine mammals. As an informal and Colloquialism, colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea ...
.
Paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...
s,
zoologist Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one ...
s,
geologists A geologist is a scientist who studies the structure, composition, and history of Earth. Geologists incorporate techniques from physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and geography to perform research in the field and the laboratory. Geolog ...
and
archeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeol ...
s once employed at the Red Mountain Museum, either as paid staff or as volunteers, include its first curator Whitman Cross, Gorden L. Bell, Jr., James P. Lamb, Winston C. Lancaster, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Susan Henson, and Amy Sheldon. The Red Mountain Museum later formed a partnership with a nearby children's science museum, The Discovery Place, to form "Discovery 2000", which then moved away from Red Mountain to downtown Birmingham and became the
McWane Science Center The McWane Science Center (formerly known as the McWane Center) is a science museum and research archive located in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, United States. The state-of-the-art hands-on science center, aquarium, and 250-seat IMAX Dome Theat ...
which opened on July 11, 1998. In 1987 the Red Mountain Expressway Cut was granted
National Natural Landmark The National Natural Landmarks (NNL) Program recognizes and encourages the conservation of outstanding examples of the natural history of the United States. It is the only national natural areas program that identifies and recognizes the best e ...
status by the
National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...
. Deemed unsafe because of the potential for rock slides, the interpretive trail has since been closed to the public. The extensive Red Mountain Museum collection is now stored at the McWane Science Center and once again available to scientists. As of October 2007, the former Red Mountain Museum building had been demolished, but plans for the site are unknown.


Literary allusions

The fantasy writer and paleontologist Caitlín R. Kiernan has used Red Mountain, particularly the area west of
U.S. Route 31 U.S. Route 31 or U.S. Highway 31 (US 31) is a major north–south U.S. highway connecting southern Alabama to northern Michigan. Its southern terminus is at an intersection with US 90/ US 98 in Spanish Fort, Alabama. I ...
and the Red Mountain cut, as the setting for four of her novels – ''Silk'' (1998), ''Threshold'' (2001), ''Low Red Moon'' (2003), and, to a much lesser extent, ''Murder of Angels'' (2004). The geography and geology of the mountain was integral to the plot of ''Threshold'', and in a
chapbook A chapbook is a type of small printed booklet that was a popular medium for street literature throughout early modern Europe. Chapbooks were usually produced cheaply, illustrated with crude woodcuts and printed on a single sheet folded into 8, 1 ...
on the novel (''Trilobite: The Writing of Threshold''; Subterranean Press, 2003), Kiernan includes an
afterword An afterword is a literary device that is often found at the end of a piece of literature. It generally covers the story of how the book came into being, or of how the idea for the book was developed. An afterword may be written by someone oth ...
describing the geological history and paleontology of the
Paleozoic The Paleozoic ( , , ; or Palaeozoic) Era is the first of three Era (geology), geological eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. Beginning 538.8 million years ago (Ma), it succeeds the Neoproterozoic (the last era of the Proterozoic Eon) and ends 251.9 Ma a ...
strata In geology and related fields, a stratum (: strata) is a layer of Rock (geology), rock or sediment characterized by certain Lithology, lithologic properties or attributes that distinguish it from adjacent layers from which it is separated by v ...
of Red Mountain.
Fannie Flagg Fannie Flagg (born Patricia Neal; September 21, 1944) is an American actress, comedian, and author. She is best known as a semi-regular panelist on the 1973–1982 versions of the game show ''Match Game'' and for the 1987 novel '' Fried Green To ...
's 2010 novel '' I Still Dream About You'' features Red Mountain prominently.


References


Further reading

* *


External links


Red Mountain Park
* {{Birmingham Landmarks Defunct museums in Alabama Geology of Alabama Geography of Birmingham, Alabama Historic American Engineering Record in Alabama Landforms of Jefferson County, Alabama Neighborhoods in Birmingham, Alabama Ridges of Alabama Works Progress Administration in Alabama