Cherokee Bend

Cherokee Bend is a large subdivision and neighborhood in Mountain Brook which was developed on former Belcher Lumber Company property, north of Old Leeds Road, south of Shades Creek, east of Mountain Brook Club, and west of Irondale, beginning in 1963. The name refers to the sharp bend in the historic Old Leeds Road where it intersects with Cherokee Road.

The subdivision, created by a group of developers incorporated as the Cherokee Bend Corporation, is known for its streets named after Civil War battles, and was once known as a neighborhood largely populated by mid-level executives from South Central Bell as the company established a regional headquarters in Birmingham just as the subdivision's 400+ homes were coming onto the market.

The original 200-acre Cherokee Bend tract is a small portion of Wallace McElwain's former Cahaba Iron Works property, but includes the site of the original blast furnace, which McElwain rebuilt after the Civil War and continued to operate until 1873, by which time most of the timber on his 2,146 acres had been cut to use for charcoal. Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company president George Crawford purchased the land in 1907 and allowed the forest to re-establish itself.

After Robert Jemison Jr developed the new suburb of Mountain Brook to the west in 1927, he proposed that Crawford should dedicate the furnace site as a public park. Its ruins are now accessible along Mountain Brook's Irondale Furnace Trail between Stone River Road and Old Leeds Road. Crawford sold the property to W. E. Belcher as a hardwood reserve for his Belcher Lumber Company in the 1930s. He sold a parcel to Houston Blount for a country estate, and another to John Davis, who built a horse stable there. After Belcher's death in 1945 the company's land was tied up in competing claims from his heirs. When the dust settled the land remained in the company's hands, controlled by Brady Belcher.

Brady Belcher sold the land in several parcels to individuals and real estate developers, most of which were members of the Cherokee Bend Corporation. Members of the Cherokee Bend Corporation included Ham Perkins of Perkins Realty, Mel Davis of Davis & Majors Realty, Thomas Rast of Johnson Rast & Hayes, and Jerry and Allen Drennen.

Jerry Drennen and his wife, Betty proposed the naming of streets after Civil War battles. Stone River Road was originally planned to be an extension of Monarch Avenue from the Mountaindale subdivision of Birmingham's Crestline neighborhood. The Birmingham City Council did not approve plans to extend Monarch Avenue over Shades Creek, and the bridge was eventually built on Groover Drive instead, connecting to Shiloh Drive in Cherokee Bend. The corporation also envisioned building a "village"-style neighborhood commercial center in Cherokee Bend but a majority of the new homeowners opposed non-residential zoning in the subdivision. Jerry Drennen developed the Cross Creek subdivision on that parcel.

As the parcels were sold, they were annexed piecemeal into the city by prior agreement with the Mountain Brook Planning Commission. To help secure the annexation, Ham Perkins bought a hilltop parcel and donated it to the city as a site Cherokee Bend Elementary School, which was constructed in 1969.

References

• Barefield, Marilyn Davis (1989) A History of Mountain Brook, Alabama and Incidentally of Shades Valley Birmingham: Southern University Press ISBN 0876519907
• Stevenson, Edward (Spring 2019) "Mountain Brook's Cherokee Bend" The Jefferson Journal. No. 2, Jefferson County Historical Association, pp. 10–13