Red Mountain cut

The Red Mountain cut is a 210-foot-deep, 1,640-foot-long highway cut created through Red Mountain for the Red Mountain expressway, an extension of Highway 31 and Highway 280 into downtown Birmingham. The work took 7 years, from 1962-69, and was opened to traffic in 1970.

The removal of 2 million cubic yards of the ridge of Red Mountain exposed over 190 million years of geologic strata dating to over 500 million years ago. The Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian and Mississippian geologic periods are visible in the cut. Special features include caves, volcanic ash layers, the Red Mountain fault line, prehistoric reefs and beaches, fossils and fossil tracks. Significantly, the cut reveals the cross-section of the red ore seam that spurred Birmingham's development and a layer containing fossils of a unique Silurian trilobite species.

A new city-owned science museum, The Red Mountain Museum, was opened on the slope adjacent to the cut in February 1978. The impetus for the museum grew out of the protests of geologists from the Geological Survey of Alabama, Birmingham-Southern College, and the Alabama Geological Society, who, with the support of the Linn-Henley Charitable Trust, convinced the Highway department to stop spraying concrete over the exposed rock strata. Museum-sponsored paleontologists recovered a large collection of fossils which now form the core of a valuable collection of Alabama fossils held by the McWane Science Center. Interpretive signage was installed along one of the eastern terraces of the cut and guardrails and fencing installed to allow museum visitors to inspect the exposed rock close-up. It is one of only three such "interpretive cuts" in the United States. The others are along Interstate 70 near Denver, Colorado and Interstate 68 in western Maryland.

In 1991, the Red Mountain Museum partnered with a nearby children's science museum, The Discovery Place, to form "Discovery 2000". Together they moved to downtown Birmingham in 1998 and became the McWane Science Center.

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 rockslides, the interpretive trail has since been closed to the public. In 2006 McWane president Tim Ritchie and staff paleontologist James Lamb discussed the possibility of selling the former Red Mountain Museum property, but keeping a public access to the walkway, which could be renovated and reopened.

External links

• Library of Congress page about the Red Mountain Expressway Cut.

References

• White, Marjorie Longenecker (1981) "Red Mountain Museum" in The Birmingham District: An Industrial History and Guide Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society. p. 222
• Hickerson, Patrick. (April 23, 2006) "McWane eyes Red Mountain path revival: Cut near old museum site puts rock history on display." Birmingham News.