Underground Birmingham: Images from Birmingham’s Iron Ore Mines

Underground Birmingham: Images from Birmingham’s Iron Ore Mines takes the reader on a pictorial journey deep into the cold, dark and long abandoned mining tunnels that are now buried and hiding along the ridge of Birmingham’s Red Mountain. Red Mountain iron ore is in the Clinton Formation, a geologic formation that runs from New York down into Alabama to the southern terminus of the Appalachian Mountains. The Birmingham iron ore mining district stretched 33 miles, extending from Trussville to Bessemer. The sixty-plus mines that operated here ranged from open-cut mines and drift mines to slope and shaft mines. It was from these mine excavations that the red hematite iron ore was obtained, which drove 100 years of iron production in the Magic City of the South. Through these images, the viewer will see the rooms and passages where miners of all backgrounds spent much of their lives literally carving out a living for their families and to make their city successful. Join in on this photo tour to see where these people worked and some of the things they left behind.