Red Mountain cut

The Red Mountain cut is a 210-foot long highway cut created between 1962 and 1969 by blasting and removing a section of the ridge of Red Mountain for the Red Mountain expressway, an extension of Highway 31 and Highway 280 into downtown Birmingham and, eventually, to a junction with I-20/59.

The cut exposed 150 million years of geologic strata, including the red ore seam that spurred Birmingham's development and a layer containing fossils of a rare Silurian trilobite species.

A new science museum, The Red Mountain Museum, was opened on the slope adjacent to the cut on September 14, 1977. The impetus for the museum grew out of the protests of geologists who 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.

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

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.