Boyle's Gap

Boyle's Gap is an opening in the ridge of Sand Mountain cut by Five Mile Creek between Tarrant and Fultondale. It was named for Bartholomew Boyle, a construction engineer for the South & North Railroad who purchased 2,000 acres in the vicinity for a farmstead and eventually developed coal mines at Lewisburg served by the Mary Lee Railroad.

The South & North, later the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, used Boyle's Gap to approach Birmingham. CSX's Boyles Yards are major railway switching yards on either side of the gap.

Bartholomew Boyle himself died in the gap that bears his name in 1875. On March 29, 1892 a battle between police officers and train robbers in the gap was reported.