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It's under development as of August 2019, but still lots of fun and exploring awaits. Zip-lining over the tree canopies of the beautiful and historic Red Mountain and miles of bike, hiking and walking trails. When the park is complete it will span nearly 1,200 acres (485 ha), making Birmingham the city with the most green space per capita in the country.
Red Mountain Park is a 1,500-acre public urban park that encloses a 4.5-mile-long section of Red Mountain, a prominent ridge that passes through Birmingham, Alabama. The woodland park contains closed mines and other artifacts of the city's industrial history. The park is one of the largest urban parks in the United States - about 78% larger than Central Park in New York City.
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The home is a perfectly-preserved emblem of Southern heritage. Staff are well-versed in how the home, which is older than the city, has been involved in many pivotal points of Birmingham's development. It's an interesting and inexpensive way to learn about the city's heritage and the civil rights struggle. The home, on Birmingham's West End, is in a somewhat blighted neighborhood. However, visiting during daylight hours carries very little risk. And the home is accessible through main artery roads off of Interstate 65 at the Green Springs Avenue exit. Homeowners on the street adjacent to Arlington have well-manicured properties, symbolic of efforts by West End leaders to strengthen this historic part of town.
Dr. Martin Luther King spent eight days in April 1963 incarcerated here, from his arrest on the 12th for violating an injunction against the demonstrations he and the SCLC were leading in the streets of Birmingham through his release on the 20th under pressure from the Kennedy administration. While there, he wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, addressing various criticisms that had been leveled against him and his movement — both an essay written by a group of local white clergymen and published in the local newspaper the day before his arrest, and more broadly from white moderates nationwide as well as certain "opposing forces in the Negro community". The prison is still in operation as such, so no tours are offered, but there is a historic plaque and other interpretive material outside.
What better way to pay homage to the mighty steel industry of early-20th century Birmingham than with an enormous statue of the Roman god of fire and metalsmithing? The world's largest cast iron statue at a height of , Vulcan was forged in 1903 as Birmingham's contribution to the St. Louis World's Fair, then spent a few decades welcoming visitors at the state fairgrounds in West Birmingham before being re-erected and rededicated in 1936 at the summit of Red Mountain by the Works Progress Administration. Vulcan now stands atop a sandstone pedestal with an observation deck near the top that provides a panoramic view of Birmingham and vicinity. Nearby is a small museum with exhibits on local industrial history.
The home and office of Dr. Edward H. Ballard, an African-American physician who hosted meetings of local Civil Rights activists here beginning in 1959, and who offered medical treatment to victims of police violence during the Birmingham campaign of 1963. The not-for-profit Ballard House Project is hard at work restoring the building and hosting events and exhibitions related to local Civil Rights history and other cultural themes.
Interpretive museum and research center, where you can learn about the struggle for civil rights through such engaging exhibits as a mocked-up 1950s-era segregated city, a replica of a Freedom Riders bus from Mississippi, and even the actual door from the cell in Birmingham Jail where Dr. Martin Luther King was held (see below). Researchers have at their disposal an expansive archive of documents and recordings.
On September 15, 1963, in the aftermath of the Birmingham campaign (and at the beginning of the first school year in which the city's public schools were integrated), four members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed this oldest African-American church in Birmingham with dynamite, killing four young girls at choir practice and further outraging the nation and solidifying support in Congress for civil rights legislation. The church was rebuilt and remains in operation today, welcoming visitors both to Sunday services (10:45AM) and to the basement exhibition space featuring historical photographs and displays related to the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham.