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Miles of wilderness hiking and biking and a 22-acre lake for watersports and fishing already are strong attractions for Red Mountain Park, one of the largest urban parks in the country.

A land swap involving U.S. Steel, the city of Birmingham and the park announced this week will add another 49 acres to the park, making it even larger. Combined with Ruffner Mountain and the downtown Railroad Park, Birmingham is a national leader in city green spaces, with thousands of acres of undeveloped and developed park land.

Too often, we find Birmingham at the top of the sorts of lists we’d rather stay away from, including national violent crime rates.

This time, Birmingham is the leader in an area that is likely to draw not only visitors from this state, region and beyond, but people who are looking for a greener place to relocate. Don’t underestimate the value of nearby wilderness spaces in inspiring the growth of urban areas.

Birmingham is blessed with more than 20 acres at the downtown Railroad Park, more than 1,000 acres at Ruffner Mountain and, with the land swaps this week, now more than 1,200 acres at Red Mountain Park.

This is very good news, but even better is how the additional land enhances Red Mountain Park’s attractions. Included in the new land are the ruins of mines and railroads that covered the property over a century from the 1860s to the 1960s and, also important, two historic cemeteries where miners and workers at furnaces in the area are buried.

Red Mountain Park not only will feature great recreation opportunities, it also will be a historic attraction for visitors wanting to learn more about the people and lives surrounding the commercial ore mines in the park and the now-vanished company towns where hundreds of miners and their families lived. Many are buried in the two cemeteries that now will be the park’s responsibility.

There’s still much to do before Red Mountain Park is fully opened to the public — including building roads, hiking and biking trails and a lake. But a Red Mountain Park official said the park should be opened for business in three years.

Sounds like it will be well worth the wait.

HIKE RED MOUNTAIN

Friends of Red Mountain Park hosts hikes at 2 p.m. on the third Sunday of each month from October through April. New trails have been added.

Where: Tours leave from the cul-de-sac at the end of Frankfurt Road off Lakeshore.

When: Oct. 18, Nov. 15, Dec. 20, Jan. 17, Feb. 21, March 21 and April 18.

A land swap involving U.S. Steel, the city of Birmingham and Red Mountain Park will add more than 50 acres to the planned park, including two historic cemeteries where miners and workers at the Oxmoor Furnace are buried, officials announced Monday.

The park will take responsibility for the cemeteries and will receive an additional 14 acres from U.S. Steel and 35 acres from the city.

U.S. Steel receives 11 acres of city property surrounded by the company’s land in the Oxmoor Valley. The city gets 3.7 acres it had been leasing from U.S. Steel for Missifield Park in Wylam.

With the additions, Red Mountain Park, which stretches for 4.5 miles along the Red Mountain ridge west of I-65, will cover more than 1,200 acres, making it one of the largest urban parks in the nation.

Steve Jones, the Alabama Power Co. vice president who serves as chairman of the Red Mountain Park and Greenways Commission, said the park is envisioned as an outdoor recreational destination, but equally important are the park’s historic attractions.

Those include the ruins of mines and railroads that covered the property from the 1860s until the 1960s. The story of the mountain – from the earliest commercial ore mines in Jefferson County to now-vanished company towns where the miners lived with their families – will be part of the park’s story.

“It’s one of the objectives of Red Mountain Park to tell that human side of the story,” Jones said. “This will be a key part of telling the story of the men and women who worked on that mountain.”

On hand for the announcement was Isaac Maston, 84, who grew up in the mining community of Wenonah. He started mining in 1943 and had with him Monday a chunk of red iron ore that he saved from the last skiff drawn out of the No. 7 mine when the mine shut down in 1962.

Maston, a participant in the park’s oral history project, said he’s proud to see the land being returned to productive use.

“I think it is going to be a great thing,” Maston said.

Through the winter, Red Moun­tain Park ranger Eric McFerrin — armed with a machete, chain saw and camera — battled through thickets of privet and dense tan­gles of dead kudzu in search of remnants of Birmingham’s his­tory.

Sometimes, he felt like he was in a Central American jungle looking for a lost Mayan temple, but McFerrin was only a few miles from downtown. And the build­ings, mine entrances and industrial artifacts he rediscovered and documented were neither ancient nor exotic.

Visible behind Red Mountain Park administrative assistant Katie Sullivan is the hoist house at the Redding Shaft mine. Until recently, the Redding mine was lost deep in a dense field of kudzu and privet. The hoist house and other sites will be featured on upcoming guided hikes.

Instead, he is clearing a trail to Birmingham’s birth, steadily revealing details of history that for decades have been overgrown, covered up and largely forgotten. From sealed mine entrances to remnant railroad tracks to an ornate building housing ma­chinery that lifted men and ore from deep underground, McFerrin is helping recons­truct the story the park hopes to tell.

From the 1860s to the 1960s, the iron ore mines of Red Mountain were a funda­mental feature of Birming­ham. From the founding of the city until World War II, the mines supplied the bloodstream of the region’s economy.

“Birmingham is here be­cause of the iron in Red Mountain,” said David Di­onne, Red Mountain Park’s executive director.

Now, a 1,100-acre stretch of Red Mountain west of I-65 is undergoing work to trans­form it into a public park. As people return to the moun­tain to enjoy scenic views and hike and bike along miles of trails through regenerated forests, the history of mining will be showcased through­out.

Detail of Park Location

McFerrin’s work is a key step in that process.

The park, controlled by the Red Mountain Park and Greenways Commission, is not yet open to the public.

And before roads, trails or parking lots are built, the his­toric assets need to be cata­logued and protected. “The commission really made this a priority,” Dionne said.

McFerrin, an aircraft main­tenance technician, had a long hobbyist interest in Bir­mingham’s industrial history.

When he was laid off, he went to work for the park. Dionne said McFerrin has been inval­uable both for his knowledge and his passion for the pro­ject.

Besides the field work, McFerrin has spent hours doing archival research, studying corporate records and maps. Particularly valu­able was a composite map of mine and structures drawn from various companies and historical periods. That map includes representations of the underground honeycomb of tunnels in the mountain’s ore seam and extending hun­dreds of feet below the sur­face throughout the Oxmoor Valley.

Just as important, McFerrin has interviewed miners and the children of miners, who lived — and, in some cases, still live — in mining commu­nities on the hillside.

The more he found out about how the mines and mining approaches changed over time, how the trains moved around the moun­tains, the more he could “make sense of the moun­tain.”

With the help of his son, Trey, and volunteers Jeff Newman, Barrie Woods, Wil­liam Eiland and Lee Sorrell, McFerrin cleared and photo­graphed mining sites up and down the park property.

A historical photo of the Redding shaft mine, which operated between 1917 and 1927. The hoist house, in the foreground, housed huge winches that pulled cars loaded with men or iron ore to and from the depths of the mines.

Highlights include:

The Eureka 2 mine, also known as Ishkooda No. 13. Eureka 2 opened in 1873. Its sister mine, Eureka 1, fed the Oxmoor Furnace nearby. Opened in 1863, Eureka 1 was the first commercial mine in Birmingham and its ore helped supply the Confeder­acy until the furnace was de­stroyed by Union troops.

Redding No. 1 and No. 2: Originally opened in the 1870s, the Redding mines supplied ore for Birming­ham’s first blast furnace, the Alice Furnace. Associated with the Redding mines is a plant on the north side of the mountain where ore was crushed before being loaded on trains. The plant, made up of structures built with cut stone, wasn’t on a map. When McFerrin found it, the vegetation was so dense he had to hack a trail just to shimmy sideways along the edge of it.

The Redding shaft mine: One of the few mines on Red Mountain that descended straight down, this one to a depth of 384 feet. The shaft mine operated between 1917 and 1927. Miners and materi­als were raised up and down in cars drawn by large cables. The machinery that operated the cable system was housed in a building the McFerrin team cleared. The building will be featured on the spring tours.

Along with locating struc­tures, park organizers are learning more about the min­ers’ communities.

“You not only have the mining history, but you also have the cultural history,” Di­onne said.

Mining was not just a job. Miners raised families, social­ized, lived and died in the company towns then remote from the city.

“People are connected spir­itually and emotionally to the mines,” he said. “This prop­erty that was so important in their lives has been returned to them.” McFerrin said it’s not just the structures they are interested in document­ing; it’s also the story of the people.

“The public is fascinated with our mining history,” he said “We want to honor the guys that worked here.”

SPRING HIKES
Red Mountain Park is not yet open to the public, but the Friends of Red Mountain Park are hosting three spring preview hikes.
• Sunday, April 19, 2 p.m.
• Saturday, May 16, 2 p.m.
• Sunday, June 14, 2 p.m.
• These hikes will follow new routes and will include stops at newly uncovered historical sites.
• All hikes leave from the cul­de- sac at the end of Frankfurt Drive, off Lakeshore Parkway.
• For more information, go to www.redmountainpark.org

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES
• Organizational meeting: Java and Jams, 321 20th St. North, downtown. Tuesday, April 14, 5:30 p.m.
• Trail construction day: Sat­urday, April 18. Frankfurt Drive cul-de-sac, 2 p.m.

Many see Red Mountain Park as the opportunity for a generation in Birmingham: a green space bigger than some of the nation’s most famous urban parks, public land on the crest of a mountain that has traditionally divided the population.

And it’s all potential, waiting for the right people to lay their plan upon it.

David Dionne is looking forward to being one of those people.

He will come to the park next month from Annapolis, Md., where he was chief of trails and natural areas for Anne Arundel County. At 51, he will retire and start from scratch as executive director at Red Mountain Park.

“It’s the chance to start a program really from the ground up,” Dionne said. “It’s a beautiful piece of land, and it’s just saturated with all kind of historical and architecturally interesting mine portals and structures and all the things that really helped put Birmingham on the map.”

Beginning such a huge park, 1,108 acres, is the sort of opportunity that rarely arrives in anyone’s career, Dionne said.

“I am very grateful to have gotten this chance,” he said. “I think Red Mountain is a phenomenal opportunity for the city and for me professionally.”

Dionne said he looks forward to people from all over the Birmingham area – he has bought a house in Hoover – volunteering to help build the trails and paths and amenities that the park will need.

The park’s governing board is planning to pay professionals to build parking lots, bathrooms and other structures. But board members also are hoping for plenty of help from the public, scything paths, pulling out privet and other invasive plants, and leading tours of the park.

“Americans love to volunteer,” Dionne said. “Once our immediate needs are met we’re very willing to work for the community needs.”

He said he has seen people from other countries amazed at how much Americans will volunteer for a public space.

“Parks are sacred places in the American psyche,” he said. “It’s a common ground where everyone can go and interact with each other; they can interact with nature.”

Dionne said he is enthusiastic about the opportunities for the Red Mountain plan to include trails to other parks.

Ultimately, he said, Birmingham has the land available to link the entire metro area without roads or vehicles. It requires only that leaders plan and find the money when the time is right.

The Red Mountain Park plan actually began from a group devoted to greenways, the Freshwater Land Trust, which continues to work to connect Birmingham’s parks and trails. As a result, several local cities have begun cooperative greenway efforts.

After 26 years running Anne Arundel’s parks and trails, Dionne has the experience needed for a new park, said Steve Jones, chairman of the Red Mountain Park and Greenway Commission. “It’s all just second nature to him.”

But first, the board and Dionne will have to build the park and its trails.

“We’ve got one chance to build it right,” Dionne said. “We have to make sure we go at a measured pace, thoroughly funded and thoroughly vetted. We have to listen to those groups that want to weave Red Mountain and the Red Mountain experience into their lives.”

Birmingham donated a critical 71.5 acres to Red Mountain Park, which will allow leaders to build an initial loop trail and open the park.

“That section was really critical to the park, because it essentially split the park in half,” said Steve Jones, chairman of the Red Mountain Greenway and Recreational Area Commission.

The commission is in the process of planning and designing a 1,108-acre park on the crest of Red Mountain, stretching from Homewood nearly to Bessemer.

Most of the land was already purchased from U.S. Steel. However, the city of Birmingham owned a section that ran almost from top to bottom of the park. Without that land, it would have been difficult to connect the east and west ends of the park.

The City Council approved the donation unanimously Tuesday. The land was worth about $700,000, according to the tax assessment.

The park is ultimately expected to cost as much as $30 million to $40 million and require several decades to complete, depending on what amenities the public chooses, including ball fields, a pond and multiple trails. Leaders have agreed to begin simply, with one large loop trail, so that the public can begin to use the park soon.

“With this behind us, we can finish up the design and move forward,” Jones said. “It was more than a piece of property. It was a very critical piece of property for us.”