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.
