Red Mountain, Birmingham, Alabama
Encyclopedia
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 the Sloss Mines
, which supplied ore to Birmingham's iron furnaces. The best displays of the mountain's geological strata occur at the Twentieth Street cut near the Vulcan statue
and at the U.S. Route 31
highway cut leading into the suburb of Homewood
. Most of Birmingham's television and radio stations have their transmission towers located on Red Mountain. Red Mountain is also home to the newly created Red Mountain Park, one of the nation's largest urban parks at 1108 acres (4.5 km²), making it larger than even New York City's Central Park
.
, a Catholic parochial school run by Dominican sisters.
as an industrial site. The mountain developed a symbolic place as the source of wealth in the region and was even portrayed as a character in pageant
s sponsored by the steel companies in their company town
s. It slopes served as the site 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.
As the steel furnaces modernized, it became more economical to purchase pelletized ore from distant sources than to continue mining ore from Red Mountain.
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 nightspot "The Club".
) phacops
id trilobite
, Acaste birminghamensis, was first collected from exposures on Red Mountain
s and invertebrate
s from hundreds of localities throughout the state. The staff collected and cataloged tens of thousands of fossils, including many Cretaceous
mosasaur
s, Pleistocene
ground sloth
s, and primitive Eocene
archaeocete whales. Paleontologists, zoologists, and archeologists once employed at the Red Mountain Museum, either as paid staff or as volunteers, include 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 as of yet unknown.
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.
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
. It is part of the Ridge-and-Valley
Ridge-and-valley Appalachians
The Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, also called the Ridge and Valley Province or the Valley and Ridge Appalachians, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division and are also a belt within the Appalachian Mountains extending from southeastern New York through northwestern New...
region of the Appalachian mountains
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...
. The Red Mountain Formation of hard Silurian
Silurian
The Silurian is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Ordovician Period, about 443.7 ± 1.5 Mya , to the beginning of the Devonian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya . As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the...
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
Hematite, also spelled as haematite, is the mineral form of iron oxide , one of several iron oxides. Hematite crystallizes in the rhombohedral system, and it has the same crystal structure as ilmenite and corundum...
iron ore. The mountain was the site of the Sloss Mines
Sloss Mines
The Sloss Mines are a group of mines in southwestern Jefferson County, Alabama. 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...
, which supplied ore to Birmingham's iron furnaces. The best displays of the mountain's geological strata occur at the Twentieth Street cut near the Vulcan statue
Vulcan statue
The Vulcan statue is the largest cast iron statue in the world, and is the city symbol of Birmingham, Alabama, reflecting its roots in the iron and steel industry. The tall statue depicts the Roman god Vulcan, god of the fire and forge. It was created as Birmingham's entry for the Louisiana...
and at the U.S. Route 31
U.S. Route 31
U.S. Route 31 is a long north–south highway connecting northern Michigan to southern Alabama, with its northern terminus at Interstate 75 near Mackinaw City, Michigan, and southern terminus at the combined U.S. Route 90 & U.S. Route 98 at Spanish Fort, Alabama...
highway cut leading into the suburb of Homewood
Homewood, Alabama
Homewood is a city in southeastern Jefferson County, Alabama, United States. It is a suburb of Birmingham, located on the other side of Red Mountain due south of the city center. It has one of the highest population densities in Alabama. As of 2009 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the...
. Most of Birmingham's television and radio stations have their transmission towers located on Red Mountain. Red Mountain is also home to the newly created Red Mountain Park, one of the nation's largest urban parks at 1108 acres (4.5 km²), making it larger than even New York City's Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
.
Description
- At Birmingham the lower 100 feet (30.5 m) is predominantly shalyShaleShale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable. Shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering...
and there is a 20 feet (6.1 m) bed of thick-layered sandstoneSandstoneSandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...
34 feet (10.4 m) above the bottom. Above this shaly part lies the Irondale ore bed, which is separated from the Big Seam of iron ore by a few feet of shale and of sandstone layers that carry large and small waterworn pebbles. Next above lies the Big seam, approximately 17 feet (5.2 m) thick, above which these is about 38 feet (11.6 m) of red sandstone that carries small quartzQuartzQuartz is the second-most-abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2. There are many different varieties of quartz,...
pebbles, the lower 14 feet (4.3 m) of which has yellow shale about equal in amount to sandstone. About 30 feet (9.1 m) still higher is the PentamerusPentamerusPentamerus is a prehistoric genus of brachiopod that lived from the Silurian to the Middle Devonian in Asia, Europe, and North America.-External links:* in the Paleobiology Database...
-bearing bed (Hickory Nut seam), a ferruginous sandstone full of casts of the interiors of the big brachiopodBrachiopodBrachiopods are a phylum of marine animals that have hard "valves" on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear end, while the front can be opened for feeding or closed for protection...
Pentamerus oblongus. There is still about 70 feet (21.3 m) more of sandstone, largely reddish, and shale to the top of the Red Mountain formation, making a total thickness in this part of Red Mountain of about 260 feet (79.2 m).
- [...]The most interesting and valuable feature of the Red Mountain formation is its iron ore, which is the chief cornerstone of Alabama's industrial structure. Although ore of good quality and of workable thickness occurs elsewhere, as at AttallaAttalla, AlabamaAttalla is a city in Etowah County, Alabama, United States. It is part of the Gadsden Metropolitan Statistical Area. According to the 2005 U.S. Census estimates, the city had a population of 6,474. -2000 Census data:...
, and on the Red Mountain along the west side of Murphrees Valley, the main deposit, the Big seam, lies under Shades Valley and the part of the Cahaba coal field southeast of that part of Red Mountain which extends from a point a mile or two southwest of BessemerBessemer, AlabamaBessemer is a city outside of Birmingham in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States eight miles west of Hoover. The population was 29,672 at the 2000 Census, but by the 2009 U.S...
to Morrow Gap about 8 miles (12.9 km) northeast of Birmingham.
- [...]The Red Mountain ores are known as a red fossilFossilFossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
ore, because originally the ironIronIron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
accumulated in extensive beds of fragments of fossils, principally the hard parts of crinoidCrinoidCrinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea of the echinoderms . Crinoidea comes from the Greek word krinon, "a lily", and eidos, "form". They live both in shallow water and in depths as great as 6,000 meters. Sea lilies refer to the crinoids which, in their adult form, are...
s, bryozoans, and brachiopodBrachiopodBrachiopods are a phylum of marine animals that have hard "valves" on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear end, while the front can be opened for feeding or closed for protection...
s. The iron, from solution in some form, was precipitated upon and within these beds of fossil fragments and thus the ore beds are simply a particular kind of sedimentary layers inclosed in ordinary sedimentSedimentSediment is naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of fluids such as wind, water, or ice, and/or by the force of gravity acting on the particle itself....
s, shalesShalësShalës is a municipality in the Elbasan District, Elbasan County, central Albania. The municipality consists of the villages Shalës, Licaj, Kurtalli, Xibrake, Xherie and Kodras....
, and sandstoneSandstoneSandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...
s, composing the bulk of the Red Mountain formation. As the fossil fragments were composed of calcium carbonateCalcium carbonateCalcium carbonate is a chemical compound with the formula CaCO3. It is a common substance found in rocks in all parts of the world, and is the main component of shells of marine organisms, snails, coal balls, pearls, and eggshells. Calcium carbonate is the active ingredient in agricultural lime,...
, which is the mineral that forms limestoneLimestoneLimestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
, the iron ore beds at depth, where they are unweathered and where there has been no condition that permitted leaching of the lime content, carry a considerable percentage of lime, so that the ore is self-fluxing. Another type of ore is ooliteOoliteOolite is a sedimentary rock formed from ooids, spherical grains composed of concentric layers. The name derives from the Hellenic word òoion for egg. Strictly, oolites consist of ooids of diameter 0.25–2 mm; rocks composed of ooids larger than 2 mm are called pisolites...
ore, in which the iron oxide occurs in the form of small lenticular pellets. The precipitation of the iron that forms this ore started around some minute particle like a small grain of sandSandSand is a naturally occurring granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles.The composition of sand is highly variable, depending on the local rock sources and conditions, but the most common constituent of sand in inland continental settings and non-tropical coastal...
or fragment of fossil and built up a small lenticular body. The two kinds of ore are more or less mixed or one or the other may predominate in a particular layer of ore. – Geology of Alabama (1926)
Neighborhood
Located on Red Mountain is one of Birmingham's most prominent neighborhoods. It is the home of the majority of the multi-million dollar residences and estates that are located within the city proper. The prestigious Altamont School, a well-known private school for its arts and science programs, is located in the neighborhood, as well as Saint Rose AcademySaint Rose Academy
Saint Rose Academy, located in Birmingham, Alabama atop Red Mountain, is a private, co-educational Catholic elementary school run by the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia.-History:...
, a Catholic parochial school run by Dominican sisters.
History
The proximity of Red Mountain's ore to nearby sources of coal and limestone was the impetus to develop and promote the Birmingham DistrictBirmingham 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...
as an industrial site. The mountain developed a symbolic place as the source of wealth in the region and was even portrayed as a character in pageant
Procession
A procession is an organized body of people advancing in a formal or ceremonial manner.-Procession elements:...
s sponsored by the steel companies in their company town
Company town
A company town is a town or city in which much or all real estate, buildings , utilities, hospitals, small businesses such as grocery stores and gas stations, and other necessities or luxuries of life within its borders are owned by a single company...
s. It slopes served as the site 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.
As the steel furnaces modernized, it became more economical to purchase pelletized ore from distant sources than to continue mining ore from Red Mountain.
In 1938, the giant cast-iron statue of the Roman god of the forge, Vulcan
Vulcan statue
The Vulcan statue is the largest cast iron statue in the world, and is the city symbol of Birmingham, Alabama, reflecting its roots in the iron and steel industry. The tall statue depicts the Roman god Vulcan, god of the fire and forge. It was created as Birmingham's entry for the Louisiana...
, which represented Birmingham in the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair
Louisiana Purchase Exposition
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the Saint Louis World's Fair, was an international exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri, United States in 1904.- Background :...
was put on display atop a sandstone tower built by the Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
. 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 nightspot "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 LlandoveryLlandovery
Llandovery is a market town in Carmarthenshire, Wales, lying on the River Tywi and the A40 road.The town is served by Llandovery railway station, where there is a park and ride to Llanelli and Shrewsbury via the Heart of Wales Line...
) phacops
Phacops
Phacops is a genus of trilobite in the order Phacopida, family Phacopidae that lived in Europe and North American in the Silurian and Devonian periods. It was a rounded animal, with a globosa head and large eyes, and probably fed on detritus...
id trilobite
Trilobite
Trilobites are a well-known fossil group of extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the Atdabanian stage of the Early Cambrian period , and they flourished throughout the lower Paleozoic era before...
, Acaste birminghamensis, was first collected from exposures on Red Mountain
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 research, collecting fossil vertebrateVertebrate
Vertebrates are animals that are members of the subphylum Vertebrata . Vertebrates are the largest group of chordates, with currently about 58,000 species described. Vertebrates include the jawless fishes, bony fishes, sharks and rays, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds...
s and invertebrate
Invertebrate
An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...
s from hundreds of localities throughout the state. The staff collected and cataloged tens of thousands of fossils, including many Cretaceous
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous , derived from the Latin "creta" , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide , is a geologic period and system from circa to million years ago. In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period of the...
mosasaur
Mosasaur
Mosasaurs are large extinct marine lizards. The first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764...
s, Pleistocene
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
ground sloth
Ground sloth
Ground sloths are a diverse group of extinct sloths, in the mammalian superorder Xenarthra. Their most recent survivors lived in the Antilles, where it has been proposed they may have survived until 1550 CE; however, the youngest AMS radiocarbon date reported is 4190 BP, calibrated to c. 4700 BP...
s, and primitive Eocene
Eocene
The Eocene Epoch, lasting from about 56 to 34 million years ago , is a major division of the geologic timescale and the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Palaeocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch. The start of the...
archaeocete whales. Paleontologists, zoologists, and archeologists once employed at the Red Mountain Museum, either as paid staff or as volunteers, include Gorden L. Bell, Jr., James P. Lamb, Winston C. Lancaster, Caitlín R. Kiernan
Caitlin R. Kiernan
Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan is the author of many science fiction and dark fantasy works, including seven novels, many comic books, more than one hundred published short stories, novellas, and vignettes, and numerous scientific papers.- Overview :Born in Dublin, Ireland, she moved to the United States...
, 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
McWane Science Center
The McWane Science Center is a science museum and research archive located in downtown Birmingham, Alabama . The state-of-the-art science center, aquarium and 280-seat IMAX Dome Theater is housed in the historic and refurbished Loveman's department store building...
which opened on July 11, 1998. In 1987 the Red Mountain Expressway Cut was granted National Natural Landmark
National Natural Landmark
The National Natural Landmark program recognizes and encourages the conservation of outstanding examples of the natural history of the United States. It is the only natural areas program of national scope that identifies and recognizes the best examples of biological and geological features in...
status by the National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
. 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 as of yet unknown.
Literary Allusions
The fantasy writer and paleontologist Caitlín R. KiernanCaitlin R. Kiernan
Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan is the author of many science fiction and dark fantasy works, including seven novels, many comic books, more than one hundred published short stories, novellas, and vignettes, and numerous scientific papers.- Overview :Born in Dublin, Ireland, she moved to the United States...
has used Red Mountain, particularly the area west of U.S. Route 31
U.S. Route 31
U.S. Route 31 is a long north–south highway connecting northern Michigan to southern Alabama, with its northern terminus at Interstate 75 near Mackinaw City, Michigan, and southern terminus at the combined U.S. Route 90 & U.S. Route 98 at Spanish Fort, Alabama...
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
Chapbook
A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
on the novel (Trilobite: The Writing of Threshold; Subterranean Press, 2003), Kiernan includes an afterword
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....
describing the geological history and paleontology of the Paleozoic
Paleozoic
The Paleozoic era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon, spanning from roughly...
strata
Stratum
In geology and related fields, a stratum is a layer of sedimentary rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguish it from other layers...
of Red Mountain.
External links
- National Park Service page about the Red Mountain Expressway Cut.
- Red Mountain Park
- Friends of Red Mountain Park