Red Mountain | |
---|---|
Highest point | |
Elevation | 1,025 ft (312 m) |
Coordinates | 33°29′12″N86°48′23″W / 33.48667°N 86.80639°W |
Geography | |
Parent range | Cahaba Ridges |
Topo map | USGS Birmingham South |
Climbing | |
Easiest route | Hike |
Red Mountain is a long ridge running southwest-northeast and dividing Jones Valley from Shades Valley south of Birmingham, Alabama. It is part of the Ridge-and-Valley region of the Appalachian Mountains. The Red Mountain Formation of hard Silurian 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 iron ore. 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 1,500 acres (6.1 km2).
The proximity of Red Mountain's ore to nearby sources of coal and limestone was the impetus to develop and promote the Birmingham District 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 pageants sponsored by the steel companies in their company towns. 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 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 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. 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."
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) phacopsid trilobite, Acaste birminghamensis, was first collected from exposures on Red Mountain [1]
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, 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 run by Dominican sisters.
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 research, collecting fossil vertebrates and invertebrates from hundreds of localities throughout the state. The staff collected and cataloged tens of thousands of fossils, including many Cretaceous mosasaurs, Pleistocene ground sloths, and primitive Eocene archaeocete whales. Paleontologists, zoologists, geologists and archeologists 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 which opened on July 11, 1998. In 1987 the Red Mountain Expressway Cut was granted National Natural Landmark status by the National Park Service. 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.
The fantasy writer and paleontologist Caitlín R. Kiernan has used Red Mountain, particularly the area west of U.S. Route 31 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 on the novel (Trilobite: The Writing of Threshold; Subterranean Press, 2003), Kiernan includes an afterword describing the geological history and paleontology of the Paleozoic strata of Red Mountain.
Fannie Flagg's 2010 novel I Still Dream About You features Red Mountain prominently.
Irondale is a city in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States. It is a suburb of Birmingham, northeast of Homewood and Mountain Brook. At the 2020 census, the population was 13,497.
Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan is an Irish-born American paleontologist and writer of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including 10 novels, series of comic books, and more than 250 published short stories, novellas, and vignettes. Kiernan is a two-time recipient of both the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards.
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 the Warrior and Cahaba coal fields in Central Alabama.
Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve is a 1,038 acres (4.20 km2) nature preserve located in the eastern portion of Jefferson County, Alabama, in the City of Birmingham's historic South East Lake neighborhood. The preserve includes a visitor center containing native Alabama animals including raptors, snakes, turtles, and owls. The Ruffner Mountain area was home to iron ore mines and stone quarries, supplying the area's steel mills.
The Tannehill Ironworks is the central feature of Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park near the unincorporated town of McCalla in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Tannehill Furnace, it was a major supplier of iron for Confederate ordnance. Remains of the old furnaces are located 12 miles (19 km) south of Bessemer off Interstate 59/Interstate 20 near the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains. The 1,500-acre (610 ha) park includes: the John Wesley Hall Grist Mill; the May Plantation Cotton Gin House; and the Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama.
Truman Heminway Aldrich was a civil engineer, a mining company executive, and a paleontologist, and briefly served in the United States House of Representatives and as Postmaster of Birmingham. He is the sole Republican ever to represent Alabama's 9th congressional district, which existed from 1893 to 1963. His brother William F. Aldrich also represented Alabama in Congress, serving three partial terms during 1896–1901 from Alabama's 4th congressional district.
Battelle is an unincorporated community in DeKalb County, Alabama, United States. Battelle was once a thriving mining community which was spread in a north – south line along the foot of Lookout Mountain five miles north of Valley Head, Alabama.
The Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama, also known as the Tannehill Museum, is an industrial museum that demonstrates iron production in the nineteenth-century Alabama located at Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park in McCalla, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Opened in 1981, it covers 13,000 square feet (1,200 m2).
The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (1852–1952), also known as TCI and the Tennessee Company, was a major American steel manufacturer with interests in coal and iron ore mining and railroad operations. Originally based entirely within Tennessee, it relocated most of its business to Alabama in the late nineteenth century, following protests over its use of free convict labor. With a sizable real estate portfolio, the company owned several Birmingham satellite towns, including Ensley, Fairfield, Docena, Edgewater and Bayview. It also established a coal mining camp it sold to U.S. Steel which developed it into the Westfield, Alabama planned community.
Acastoides is an extinct genus of trilobite that lived during the Silurian and Devonian. It has been found in Bolivia, France, Morocco, Poland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
The Red Mountain Expressway Cut, also known as the Red Mountain Geological Cut, is a section of Red Mountain that was blasted and removed in the 1960s to allow the Red Mountain Expressway to enter downtown Birmingham, Alabama. This highway links Birmingham with its southern suburbs of Homewood, Mountain Brook, and Vestavia Hills. It has spurred suburban growth towards the south of Birmingham. This section also provides the route for U.S. Route 31 (US 31) to the south and US 280 to the southeast.
The Wenonah community was the name of one of a series of Red Mountain ore mining camps for employees of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company (TCI).
The Woodward Iron Company was founded on December 31, 1881, by brothers William and Joseph Woodward. William was the company president and Joseph was the company secretary. The company operated iron and coal mines, quarries and furnaces; these were connected by a private industrial railroad based in Bessemer, Alabama. The company administrative office was located near Woodward Ore Mine #1, south of Paul's Hill in Bessemer.
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 mines dug in the Birmingham District, and the last ore mine to operate in the region, closing in 1971.
The Sloss Mines are a group of mines in southwestern Jefferson County, Alabama, United States. They were established by the Sloss Iron and Steel Company and its successor, the Sloss-Sheffield Iron and Steel Company, on the southern end of Red Mountain. The Sloss Iron and Steel Company itself was founded by James Sloss in 1881 as the Sloss Furnace Company. The Sloss Mines produced iron ore from 1882 until the 1960s. The ore that these mines produced were essential to the production of iron at the Sloss Furnaces, making them an important element in the formation of adjacent Birmingham and Bessemer as cities.
Paleontology in Alabama refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Alabama. Pennsylvanian plant fossils are common, especially around coal mines. During the early Paleozoic, Alabama was at least partially covered by a sea that would end up being home to creatures including brachiopods, bryozoans, corals, and graptolites. During the Devonian the local seas deepened and local wildlife became scarce due to their decreasing oxygen levels.
Paleontology in Vermont comprises paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Vermont. Fossils are generally uncommon in Vermont. Nevertheless, however, significant finds have been made in the state. Very few fossils are known in Vermont east of the Green Mountains due to the type of rock underlying that area. During the early part of the Paleozoic era, Vermont was covered by a warm, shallow sea that would end up being home to creatures like brachiopods, corals, crinoids, ostracoderms, and trilobites. There are no rocks in the state from the Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, or Jurassic periods. The few Cretaceous rocks present contain no fossils. The Paleogene and Neogene periods are also absent from the local rock record. During the Ice Age, glaciers scoured the state. At times the state was inundated by seawater, allowing marine mammals to venture in. After the seawater drained away the state was home to mastodons. Local fossils had already attracted scientific attention by the mid-19th century when mastodon remains were found in Rutland County. In 1950 a major Paleozoic invertebrate find occurred. The Pleistocene Beluga whale Delphinapterus leucas is the Vermont state fossil.
Henry Ticknor DeBardeleben was an American coal magnate from Alabama.
Iron mining in the United States produced 48 million metric tons of iron ore in 2019. Iron ore was the third-highest-value metal mined in the United States, after gold and copper. Iron ore was mined from nine active mines and three reclamation operations in Michigan, Minnesota, and Utah. Most of the iron ore was mined in northern Minnesota's Mesabi Range. Net exports were 3.9 million tons. US iron ore made up 2.5 percent of the total mined worldwide in 2015. Employment as of 2014 was 5,750 in iron mines and iron ore treatment plants.
Sliabh an Iarainn, anglicized Slieve Anierin, is a mountain in County Leitrim, Ireland. It rises to 585 metres (1,919 ft) and lies east of Lough Allen and northeast of Drumshanbo. It is part of the Cuilcagh Mountains. The mountain was shaped by the southwestward movement of ice age glaciers over millions of years, the morainic drift heaping thousands of drumlins in the surrounding lowlands. Historically there were many iron ore deposits and ironworks in the area. Irish mythology associates the mountain with the Tuatha Dé Danann, particularly the smith god Goibniu. Sliabh an Iarainn is an important natural heritage site with exposed marine and coastal fauna of paleontological interest