Helen Bess Mine

The Helen Bess Mine is a former red iron ore mine which supplied Wallace McElwain's Irondale Furnace beginning in 1864. It is, after the Eureka No. 1 Mine, the earliest commercial ore mine on Red Mountain.

The mine site was situated on the crest of Red Mountain, with surface mining on the north slope and drift mining and at least one underground slope in the flanks of a ravine in the south side.

Originally the soft red ore of the "Big seam", which formed an outcrop, was quarried from the surface and moved by tramway to the furnace site. By 1909 a sloping mine shaft 500 feet long had been dug into the "Irondale seam" with seven headings on each side at 60-foot intervals. Another bed, the "Ida seam", was also accessible, but produced harder, lower quality ore. The ores from the Big and Irondale seams ranged from 32 to 35% iron content, 30 to 32% silica, and 6 to 8.5% lime.

In the 1880s, a spur from L & N's Birmingham Mineral Railroad was laid into the base of the ravine. Miners would come to the site by taking a streetcar to 42nd Street at Cliff Road and walking the rest of the way up the mountainside.

At that time, the mine was operated by the Birmingham Ore and Mining Company. The mine was closed in 1920.

The slope mine entrance became part of the property of the Rick Woodward residence on Altamont Road, constructed in 1924. The Timberlane Apartments were built over the remainder of the mining area on the southern slope by McConnell-White-Terry Realty in 1967. The company chose to preserve the remains of the mining operations in their redevelopment.

References

• White, Marjorie Longenecker (1981) The Birmingham District: An Industrial History and Guide. Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society ISBN 9990230099