Alabama: Birmingham, Vulcan Park

Today, we pushed further south into Alabama moving towards the State capital Montgomery. En route, we decide to call into Birmingham, Alabama. This town was once a thriving industrial town based around the iron manufacturing industry but as time has passed it has to reinvent itself, focusing on new sectors like medicine.

One thing that had captured our imagination was Vulcan Park, which is based around a large cast-iron statue of the Roman God Vulcan (god of fire and forge). At 56 feet this is the largest cast-iron statue in the world and was built for the 1904 World’s Fair in St Louis to demonstrate Birmingham’s iron industry. It is mounted on top of a large pillar on a hill overlooking the City of Birmingham. On the grounds of the statue is a museum cataloguing Birmingham’s industrial past and its history through the Great Depression and its role in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. One of the things we had noticed on arrival was several school buses full of children on school trips to the park. Fortunately, it was lunchtime so we were able to dodge in amongst their lunch munching – what bliss!

I feel a bit sorry Jack and Emily who we continue to drag around museums. To be fair they are good about it but need to be reminded this is their education for this year. So, we had to pull them up a few times and make them look at the displays and read the information otherwise we would be through and out of the museum within 10 minutes. The museum itself had only been open since June so had yet to be wrecked by visitors and although small it was very well presented.