Reader's Gap
Reader's Gap is a pass across the ridge of Red Mountain at Muscoda, southeast of Bessemer.
Alabama State Highway 150 crosses Red Mountain at Reader's Gap. The first road through the gap opened in the early 1870s, connecting New Jonesboro to Montevallo Road. The Louisville & Nashville Railroad used the gap to enter Jones Valley before 1899. It was later paralleled by the Birmingham Mineral Railroad's Reader's Gap Branch which was abandoned in the 1930s.
The exposure of rock layers above the Fort Payne chert at Reader's Gap shows the Big seam of iron ore to have thinned to about 18 feet, and that the mountain's large Bangor limestone bed, visible at Grace's Gap, has been completely subsumed by the Floyd shale beds. Also visible is a 50-foot strike slip fault, part of the Ishkooda-Potter fault system.
| To the west: Spark's Gap |
Red Mountain passes Reader's Gap |
To the east: Spring Gap |