Red Mountain is a long ridge running southwest-northeast and dividing Jones Valley from Shades Valley south of Birmingham, Alabama. It is part of the Ridge-and-Valley region of the Appalachian mountains. The Red Mountain Formation of hard Silurian rock strata lies exposed in several long crests, and was named "Red Mountain" because of the rust-stained rock faces and prominent seams of red hematite iron ore. The mountain was the site of the Sloss, Republic Steel, Woodward Iron and Tennessee Coal and iron mines which supplied ore to Birmingham's iron furnaces. The best displays of the mountain's geological strata occur at the Twentieth Street cut near the Vulcan statue and at the U.S. Route 31 highway cut leading into the suburb of Homewood. Most of Birmingham's television and radio stations have their transmission towers located on Red Mountain. Red Mountain is also home to Red Mountain Park, one of the largest urban parks in the United States at . Description At Birmingham the lower is predominantly shaly and there is a bed of thick-layered sandstone above the bottom. Above this shaly part lies the Irondale ore bed, which is separated from the Big Seam of iron ore by a few feet of shale and of sandstone layers that carry large and small waterworn pebbles. Next above lies the Big seam, approximately thick, above which these is about of red sandstone that carries small quartz pebbles, the lower of which has yellow shale about equal in amount to sandstone. About still higher is the Pentamerus-bearing bed (Hickory Nut seam), a ferruginous sandstone full of casts of the interiors of the big brachiopod Pentamerus oblongus. There is still about more of sandstone, largely reddish, and shale to the top of the Red Mountain formation, making a total thickness in this part of Red Mountain of about . [...]The most interesting and valuable feature of the Red Mountain formation is its iron ore, which is the chief cornerstone of Alabama's industrial structure. Although ore of good quality and of workable thickness occurs elsewhere, as at Attalla, and on the Red Mountain along the west side of Murphrees Valley, the main deposit, the Big seam, lies under Shades Valley and the part of the Cahaba coal field southeast of that part of Red Mountain which extends from a point a mile or two southwest of Bessemer to Morrow Gap about northeast of Birmingham. [...]The Red Mountain