" In eighteen hundred and seventy-one,
When Birmingham was Elyton."

The first house in Birmingham, except the historic old blacksmith shop, had its foundations laid August 8,1871. In December following the city was incorporated with twelve hundred inhabitants, eighteen two-story brick stores, thirty frame houses, and with contracts for a large number of buildings for various purposes. Colonel James R. Powell, the "Duke of Birmingham," as president of the Elyton Land Company, was at this time giving his energies and far-sighted wisdom to the building of the city. The streets and avenues were admirably planned for simplicity and symmetry. Agents sent by capitalists confirmed the marvellous estimates of mineral wealth. It has been conceded that the Warrior, Cahaba, and Coosa coal-fields contain coal enough to form a block ten feet thick that will cover moro than four thousand square miles of area, furnishing more than forty-two billion tons of coal for available use—enough to last more than eleven thousand years at the rate of ten thousand tons a day.

A mountain of iron, twenty-five miles long, skirts Birmingham on the south; lime and rock quarries abound. The world felt the throb of the mighty life and the vast possibilities of Birmingham. Wealth poured into it Skill and enterprise gathered to its bosom. Railroads multiplied. Furnaces and foundries were built. Population rushed in so rapidly that health regulations could not be observed. Cholera broke out and put a brief check upon the inrush of people and capital; but regeneration and renewed confidence turned back to this beautiful region of mineral wealth admittedly equal to the richest in the world.

A bird's-eye view from Red Mountain fills one with mighty conclusions as he notes the sweep of Jones Valley and the restless city, with roll of cars bringing in and carrying out passengers and freight, with smoke-stacks telling of the transmutation of ores into products for the use of man, with moving masses of people, and the thrum of a thousand industries. The flare of furnaces and the roar of ponderous machinery give strange impressions of progress and power. The proud Indian who looked years ago from this mountain over the far-reaching valley must have felt thrills of wildest pleasure as the view broke upon his gaze; and the white man's aggression must have given him a deeper sorrow as he looked for the last time upon scenes of such rare beauty and loveliness, and recognized them to be passing into the possession of another race.

In the city and throughout the Birmingham District there is a wonderful list of industries. Numerous blast-furnaces are in operation. Immense cotton-gin factories and cotton-mills, with nearly every other industry that occupies the attention of a vigorous and intelligent people, are a part of the organic life of Birmingham. Ice factories, transfer companies, magnificent dry-goods and general supply stores, cotton compresses and oil mills, lumber firms, factories for the manufacture of furniture, of bicycles, of fertilizers, of car-wheels, of sugar-mill machinery, of Corliss and other engines, and of immense electric power-houses help the aggregate of the many-sided material industries; while schools, churches, hospitals, literary and social clubs foster spiritual life and the higher sympathies of humanity. All denominations worship in beautiful churches, and engage able talent for their pulpits. Nowhere else can be found more enthusiastic members of churches, giving more abundantly of labors and money, time and prayers, to every cause that calls for consecrated services.

A magnificent foundation for public school instruction is seen in the elegant school buildings in different portions of the city. The Methodist College at Owenton, Howard College and the Athenaeum at East Lake, the Pollock-Stephens Institute and the Birmingham Seminary, with Holy Angels Academy, and excellent small private schools, impart tone to the intellectual life. The annual music festivals give proof of high culture in the divine art of music, while studios display the products of brush and pencil guided by the taste of genius. Newspapers and periodicals catch the facts and impulses of the passing hours and impress them upon the hearts and minds of the people, giving them as evidence of the growth and character of public opinion. The Hillman and St. Vincent Hospitals, with numerous private sanitariums, dispense gentle services to the sick and suffering.

The water-supply is ample for a population of two hundred and fifty thousand, and it is probable that new water-works may bring into the city the pure, sparkling water of the Gate Citv Artesian wells. Street railways link East Lake, Woodlawn, Avondale, Ensley, Pratt City, West End, Thomas, and Bessemer, beautiful suburban villages and neighboring cities, with Birmingham, and furnish easy access to parks and springs nestling in everydirection and inviting to pure water and rural outings. The springs are wonderfully interesting. One is forty-five feet deep where it first rises from the earth. Rolling away through a rustic milk-house it imparts a delightfully pleasant effect.

Great trunk-lines of railroad furnish ample freight and passenger facilities to all points of the compass. Shipments of iron unload in the ports of England, China, Japan, and other world powers, bringing to Birmingham manufacturers large bills of exchange—the crowning expression of the beautiful in art.

The practical manufacture of steel began in 1897. Millions of dollars have since poured into the establishment of steel and by-product plants, and effected the manufacture of basic steel on a largo scale in the BirminghamDistrict Millions of dollars have followed for other investments. Pretty homes and beautiful macadamized roads emphasize the prosperity of the region. The inexhaustible supplies of iron and coal and lime, in convenient juxtaposition, form the chief sources of wealth and business, but although only thirty years old (1901), and with multitudinous material conveniences and money-producing developments, Birmingham blends with her matchlessprogress social, religious, educational, and civic pleasures and enlargement. Possibly no other city of its size is so free from envy and enmity and the vices that foster gossip. Good feeling prevails. Good things evoke thought and conversation. Too many enterprises invite contemplation to allow time to be wasted over the insipid nothings of life. Buoyant, hopeful, energetic, aggressive, the people are vigorously concocting plans " for the glorious privilege of being independent," and for helping every noble work of humanity.

When one considers the rapid growth of Birmingham, its enormous mineral regions of wealth calling for labor, genius, and capital, its splendid churches, its magnificent schools, its institutions of charity, its intelligent, high-toned citizens, its furnaces and factories, its shops and mills, its broad streets and avenues, its commercial expansion, its beautiful  suburban villages, its climatic salubrity, its railroads, its public domes and private homes, its exports, its possibilities, there is no wonder that the world poured capital, men, women, and children, confidence, blessings, and hopes into the scales of its prosperity, and joined Alabama in making it the " Magic City." When it is considered further that Tuskaloosa, Fort Payne, Gadsden, Decatur, Sheffield, Florence, Huntsville, and many smaller places of North Alabama are as lesser diamonds in the circlet of its glory, that among these satellites Birmingham sits "as the moon among lesser stars," some idea can be formed of the great future that awaits the regions of Mineral Alabama.

Source: Sketches of Alabama History 1900, by Joel Campbell Du Bose, Transcribed by C. Anthony