United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s, beginning in the United States. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, it was the longest and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is used as an example of how intensely the world's economy can decline; the Great Depression started in the United States after a major fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929, became worldwide news with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession; some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II; the Great Depression had devastating effects in countries both poor. Personal income, tax revenue and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%.
Unemployment in the U. S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities around the world were hit hard those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was halted in many countries. Farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few alternative sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as mining and logging suffered the most. Economic historians attribute the start of the Great Depression to the sudden devastating collapse of U. S. stock market prices on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday. However, some dispute this conclusion and see the stock crash as a symptom, rather than a cause, of the Great Depression. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 optimism persisted for some time. John D. Rockefeller said "These are days. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have gone. Prosperity has always returned and will again." The stock market turned upward in early 1930. This was still 30% below the peak of September 1929.
Together and business spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the corresponding period of the previous year. On the other hand, many of whom had suffered severe losses in the stock market the previous year, cut back their expenditures by 10%. In addition, beginning in the mid-1930s, a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the U. S. By mid-1930, interest rates had dropped to low levels, but expected deflation and the continuing reluctance of people to borrow meant that consumer spending and investment were depressed. By May 1930, automobile sales had declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices in general began to decline, although wages held steady in 1930. A deflationary spiral started in 1931. Farmers faced a worse outlook. At its peak, the Great Depression saw nearly 10% of all Great Plains farms change hands despite federal assistance; the decline in the U. S. economy was the factor. Frantic attempts to shore up the economies of individual nations through protectionist policies, such as the 1930 U.
S. Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries, exacerbated the collapse in global trade. By 1933, the economic decline had pushed world trade to one-third of its level just four years earlier. Change in economic indicators 1929–32 The two classical competing theories of the Great Depression are the Keynesian and the monetarist explanation. There are various heterodox theories that downplay or reject the explanations of the Keynesians and monetarists; the consensus among demand-driven theories is that a large-scale loss of confidence led to a sudden reduction in consumption and investment spending. Once panic and deflation set in, many people believed they could avoid further losses by keeping clear of the markets. Holding money became profitable as prices dropped lower and a given amount of money bought more goods, exacerbating the drop in demand. Monetarists believe that the Great Depression started as an ordinary recession, but the shrinking of the money supply exacerbated the economic situation, causing a recession to descend into the Great Depression.
Economists and economic historians are evenly split as to whether the traditional monetary explanation that monetary forces were the primary cause of the Great Depression is right, or the traditional Keynesian explanation that a fall in autonomous spending investment, is the primary explanation for the onset of the Great Depression. Today the controversy is of lesser importance since there is mainstream support for the debt deflation theory and the expectations hypothesis that building on the monetary explanation of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz add non-monetary explanations. There is consensus that the Federal Reserve System should have cut short the process of monetary deflation and banking collapse. If they had done this, the economic downturn would have been much shorter. British economist John Maynard Keynes argued in The General Theory of Employment and Money that lower aggregate expenditures in the economy contributed to a massive decline in income and to employment, well below the average.
In such a situation, the economy reached equilibrium at low levels of economic activity and high unemployment. Keynes' basic idea was simple
Alabama
Alabama is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Mississippi to the west. Alabama is the 30th largest by area and the 24th-most populous of the U. S. states. With a total of 1,500 miles of inland waterways, Alabama has among the most of any state. Alabama is nicknamed the Yellowhammer State, after the state bird. Alabama is known as the "Heart of Dixie" and the "Cotton State"; the state tree is the longleaf pine, the state flower is the camellia. Alabama's capital is Montgomery; the largest city by population is Birmingham. The oldest city is Mobile, founded by French colonists in 1702 as the capital of French Louisiana. From the American Civil War until World War II, like many states in the southern U. S. suffered economic hardship, in part because of its continued dependence on agriculture. Similar to other former slave states, Alabamian legislators employed Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise and otherwise discriminate against African Americans from the end of the Reconstruction Era up until at least the 1970s.
Despite the growth of major industries and urban centers, white rural interests dominated the state legislature from 1901 to the 1960s. During this time, urban interests and African Americans were markedly under-represented. Following World War II, Alabama grew as the state's economy changed from one based on agriculture to one with diversified interests; the state's economy in the 21st century is based on management, finance, aerospace, mineral extraction, education and technology. The European-American naming of the Alabama River and state was derived from the Alabama people, a Muskogean-speaking tribe whose members lived just below the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers on the upper reaches of the river. In the Alabama language, the word for a person of Alabama lineage is Albaamo; the suggestion that "Alabama" was borrowed from the Choctaw language is unlikely. The word's spelling varies among historical sources; the first usage appears in three accounts of the Hernando de Soto expedition of 1540: Garcilaso de la Vega used Alibamo, while the Knight of Elvas and Rodrigo Ranjel wrote Alibamu and Limamu in transliterations of the term.
As early as 1702, the French called the tribe the Alibamon, with French maps identifying the river as Rivière des Alibamons. Other spellings of the name have included Alibamu, Albama, Alibama, Alabamu, Allibamou. Sources disagree on the word's meaning; some scholars suggest the word comes from amo. The meaning may have been "clearers of the thicket" or "herb gatherers", referring to clearing land for cultivation or collecting medicinal plants; the state has numerous place names of Native American origin. However, there are no correspondingly similar words in the Alabama language. An 1842 article in the Jacksonville Republican proposed it meant "Here We Rest." This notion was popularized in the 1850s through the writings of Alexander Beaufort Meek. Experts in the Muskogean languages have not found any evidence to support such a translation. Indigenous peoples of varying cultures lived in the area for thousands of years before the advent of European colonization. Trade with the northeastern tribes by the Ohio River began during the Burial Mound Period and continued until European contact.
The agrarian Mississippian culture covered most of the state from 1000 to 1600 AD, with one of its major centers built at what is now the Moundville Archaeological Site in Moundville, Alabama. This is the second-largest complex of the classic Middle Mississippian era, after Cahokia in present-day Illinois, the center of the culture. Analysis of artifacts from archaeological excavations at Moundville were the basis of scholars' formulating the characteristics of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Contrary to popular belief, the SECC appears to have no direct links to Mesoamerican culture, but developed independently; the Ceremonial Complex represents a major component of the religion of the Mississippian peoples. Among the historical tribes of Native American people living in present-day Alabama at the time of European contact were the Cherokee, an Iroquoian language people. While part of the same large language family, the Muskogee tribes developed distinct cultures and languages. With exploration in the 16th century, the Spanish were the first Europeans to reach Alabama.
The expedition of Hernando de Soto passed through Mabila and other parts of the state in 1540. More than 160 years the French founded the region's first European settlement at Old Mobile in 1702; the city was moved to the current site of Mobile in 1711. This area was claimed by the French from 1702 to 1763 as part of La Louisiane. After the French lost to the British in the Seven Years' War, it became part of British West Florida from 1763 to 1783. After the United States victory in the American Revolutionary War, the territory was divided between the United States and Spain; the latter retained control of this western territory from 1783 until the surrender of the Spanish garrison at Mobile to U. S. forces on April 13, 1813. Thomas Bassett, a loyalist to the British monarchy during the Revolutionary era, was one of the earliest white settlers in the state
American Legion
The American Legion is a U. S. war veterans' organization headquartered in Indiana. It is made up of state, U. S. territory, overseas departments, these are in turn made up of local posts. The legislative body of The American Legion is a national convention, held annually; the organization was founded on March 15, 1919, at the American Club near Place de la Concorde in Paris, France, by members of the American Expeditionary Forces, it was chartered on September 16, 1919, by the U. S. Congress; the organization played the leading role in drafting and passing of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, otherwise known as the "GI Bill." In addition to organizing commemorative events, members provide assistance at VA hospitals and clinics. It is active in issue-oriented U. S. politics. Its primary political activity is lobbying on behalf of interests of veterans and service members, including support for benefits such as pensions and the Veterans Health Administration; the organization has historically promoted "Americanism."
Veterans who served at least one day of active duty during wartime, or are serving now, are eligible for membership in The American Legion. Members must have been honorably discharged/discharged under honorable conditions or are still serving honorably. Merchant Marines who served from December 7, 1941, to December 31, 1946, are eligible. World War I veterans were eligible during their lifetimes. Membership peaked for The American Legion right after World War II, when enrollments doubled from 1.7 million to 3.3 million. After the Korean War, there were 2.5 million Legionnaires. As the baby boomers joined, its membership increased to 3.1 million in 1992. However, membership has been decreasing since then. In 2013, National Headquarters of The American Legion reported 2.3 million members. The aftermath of two American wars in the second half of the 19th century had seen the formation of several ex-soldiers' organizations. Former Union Army soldiers of the American Civil War of 1861–65 established a fraternal organization called the Grand Army of the Republic, while their Southern brethren would join together in the United Confederate Veterans.
Both organizations emerged as powerful political entities, with the GAR serving as a mainstay of the Republican Party, which controlled the Presidency from the Civil War through William Howard Taft's administration except for the two terms of office of Grover Cleveland. In Southern politics the UCV maintained an more dominant position as a bulwark of the Democratic Party which dominated there; the conclusion of the brief Spanish–American conflict of 1898 ushered in another soldiers' organization, the American Veterans of Foreign Service, today known as the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. Concerned about the United States' absence from the world war and the preparedness of its army and navy, magazine editor Arthur Sullivant Hoffman and writer Stephen Allan Reynolds founded The American Legion in February 1915, inspired by a letter from reader E. D. Cook, they lobbied government to strengthen the military. They held a preparedness parade in New York City and made a film America Prepare Officers included Theodore Roosevelt, Arthur S. Hoffman, William Howard Taft, Elihu Root, Jacob M. Dickinson, Henry L. Stimson and Luke E. Wright, George von L. Meyer, Truman H. Newberry and Charles J. Bonaparte.
Its officers were at New York City. In 1917, when war was declared the Legion had 23,000 members skilled in 77 professions pledged to fight, their pledge cards were shared with the government and used to raise two regiments of air mechanics. The Legion was discorporated in 1917. With the termination of hostilities in World War I in November 1918, some American officers, participants in the conflict began to think about creating a similar organization for the two million men, on European duty; the need for an organization for former members of the AEF was immediate. With the war at an end, hundreds of thousands of impatient draftees found themselves trapped in France and pining for home, certain only that untold weeks or months lay ahead of them before their return would be logistically possible. Morale plummeted. Cautionary voices were raised about an apparent correlation between disaffected and discharged troops and the Bolshevik uprisings taking place in Russia, Finland and Hungary; this situation was a particular matter of concern to Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. eldest son of the 26th President.
One day in January 1919, he had a discussion at General Headquarters with a mobilized National Guard officer named George A. White, a former newspaper editor with the Portland Oregonian. After long discussion, he suggested the establishment at once of a new servicemen's organization including all members of the AEF, as well as those soldiers who remained stateside as members of the Army and Marine Corps during the war without having been shipped abroad, he and White advocated ceaselessly for this proposal until they found sufficient support at headquarters to move forward with the plan. General John J. Pershing issued orders to a group of 20 non-career officers to report to the YMCA in Paris on February 15, 1919; the selection of these individuals had been made by Roosevelt. They were joined with a number of regular Army officers Pershing selected himself; the session of reserve and regular officers was instructed to provide a set of laws to curb the problem of declining morale. After three days, the officers presented a series of proposals, including eliminating restrictive regulations, organizing additional athletic and recreational events, expanding leave time and entertainment programs
Tudor architecture
The Tudor architectural style is the final development of Medieval architecture in England, during the Tudor period and beyond, the tentative introduction of Renaissance architecture to England. It is not used to refer to the whole period of the Tudor dynasty, but to the style used in buildings of some prestige in the period between 1500 and 1560, it followed the Late Gothic Perpendicular style and was superseded by Elizabethan architecture from about 1560 in domestic building of any pretensions to fashion. In the much more slow-moving styles of vernacular architecture "Tudor" has become a designation for styles like half-timbering that characterize the few buildings surviving from before 1485 and others from the Stuart period. In this form the Tudor style long retained its hold on English taste. Nevertheless,'Tudor style' is an awkward style-designation, with its implied suggestions of continuity through the period of the Tudor dynasty and the misleading impression that there was a style break at the accession of Stuart James I in 1603.
The low Tudor arch was a defining feature. Some of the most remarkable oriel windows belong to this period. Mouldings are more spread out and the foliage becomes more naturalistic. During the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, many Italian artists arrived in England. However, in the following reign of Elizabeth I, the influence of Northern Mannerism derived from books, was greater. Courtiers and other wealthy Elizabethans competed to build prodigy houses that proclaimed their status; the Dissolution of the Monasteries redistributed large amounts of land to the wealthy, resulting in a secular building boom, as well as a source of stone. The building of churches had slowed somewhat before the English Reformation, after a great boom in the previous century, but was brought to a nearly complete stop by the Reformation. Civic and university buildings became more numerous in the period, which saw general increasing prosperity. Brick was something of an exotic and expensive rarity at the beginning of the period, but during it became widely used in many parts of England for modest buildings restricting traditional methods such as wood framed daub and wattle and half-timbering to the lower classes by the end of the period.
Scotland was a different country throughout the period, is not covered here, but early Renaissance architecture in Scotland was influenced by close contacts between the French and Scottish courts, there are a number of buildings from before 1560 that show a more thorough adoption of continental Renaissance styles than their English equivalents. Tudor style buildings have several features that separate them from Medieval and 17th-century design. Though this period is better known for the luxuries and excesses of his son and granddaughter, it was under Henry VII that the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance began and it is underestimated how much effort the founder of the Tudor dynasty invested in making huge changes to the way things were done before versus the way they were being done by the time he died. Prior to 1485, many wealthy and noble landowners lived in homes that were not comfortable but built to withstand sieges, though manor houses that were only fortified, if at all, had been built.
Castles and smaller manor houses had moats and crenelations designed for archers to stand guard and pick off approaching enemies. However, with the arrival of gunpowder and cannons by the time of Henry VI, fortifications like castles became obsolete; the autumn of 1485 marked the ascension of Henry VII to the throne. Until Henry's accession, England had been engaged in the Wars of the Roses that had left the royal coffers in deep trouble-Yorkists had raided the treasury just after the death of Edward IV. Therefore, in 1487, Henry Tudor passed laws against livery and maintenance, which checked the nobility's ability to raise armies independent of the crown, raised taxes mightily on the nobility through a trusted advisor, John Morton. Henry Tudor was hellbent on repairing the damage done by so many years of war, that meant increasing financial security, it meant recentralising power in London with the crown alone and away from interrelated nobles, squabbling over scraps of power since the reign of Richard II, evidenced by the crown beginning to be fought over by different branches of the descendants of Edward III at that time.
From Henry's point of view, there were taxes to collect, bills of attainder to hand out to the disloyal, Yorkists to marry off to Lancastrians, the majesty of the monarchy to repair and restore, a metaphorical wrecking ball to be applied to the medieval ideal of the warrior king crouching in his fortress and his vassals in theirs. During the reign of Henry VII, he made some savvy business investments in the alum trade and made vast improvements to the waterborne infrastructure of the country: the site of his dry dock in Portsmouth still is used today, because of Henry's investments in alum records show a striking increase in the volume of ships and thus trade coming in and out of England. Portsmouth was an early pet project of Henry VII, one he paid £193 for the entire construction, a sum that for its time was enormous, it must be note that not all Tudor architecture was of a residential nature, this particular one is important as it laid the foundation for other civic projects done under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
Henry Tudor built the first dry dock in the wo
Cahaba River
The Cahaba River is the longest free-flowing river in Alabama and is among the most scenic and biologically diverse rivers in the United States. It is part of the larger Mobile River basin. With headwaters near Birmingham, the Cahaba flows southwest at Heiberger turns southeast and joins the Alabama River at the ghost town and former Alabama capital of Cahaba in Dallas County. Within central Alabama, the Cahaba River is 194 miles long and drains an area of 1,870 square miles; the Cahaba River flows across three physiographic provinces of the state: Appalachian Plateau and Valley, Coastal Plain. The Mobile River basin has the largest Gulf Coast drainage basin east of the Mississippi River, the Cahaba is one of the seven river systems that contribute to its flow; the mean discharge of water from 1938-2000 is about 80 m3/s. The average rainfall is 138 cm/yr; the terrestrial biome of the river is classified as eastern deciduous forest. The Cahaba River begins in the Valley and Ridge region bounded by the Piedmont to the southeast and the Cumberland Plateau to the northwest.
It has two major physical regions: Lower Cahaba. The river empties into the Alabama River; the upper Cahaba forms the first 100 miles, starting at the headwaters and continuing to the Fall Line, a region in which the Appalachian Mountains end and the Gulf Coastal Plain begins. It passes through Trussville, Irondale, Mountain Brook, West Blocton, Centreville; the lower Cahaba begins at the fall line and continues through Selma and empties into the Alabama River at the former town of Cahaba. Located adjacent to the Cahaba River basin, the Moundville Archaeological Site was the second-largest community of the Mississippian culture; the Black Warrior River and the Cahaba River run parallel to each other for over 100 miles as close 30 miles apart. The Bottle Creek Site, located little more than 100 miles downriver in the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta influenced the region. A large mound remains on the river, just south of Centerville. A large village occupied the town of Cahaba site from 100–1550 AD, during the Woodland and Mississippian periods.
The Cahaba River ends at the former town of Cahaba known as Cahawba. The main attraction of the area to settlers was its suitability for cotton cultivation. Settlement was slow to lime in the water. Once it was discovered how rich the lands were for producing cotton, there was a land rush into the Black Belt; the town of Cahaba acted as Alabama’s first seat of government from 1820 to 1825. In time, the town came to life with visitors, hotels, state buildings, court sessions, ships, land sales, a local newspaper, the Cahaba Press. William Wyatt Bibb, Alabama’s first governor, decided on Cahaba because of the scenery, fertile area, navigable river ways; the final decision was to have Cahaba as the state capital only through 1825, a more permanent site could be decided on. Cahaba suffered harsh economic struggles and disease from 1819 to 1822. However, in 1821, a steamboat, the Harriet, overcame the Alabama River’s fast current and made it past Cahaba; the river became a major trade route, which caused the city to grow, despite the removal of the capital to Tuscaloosa in 1825.
It served as the county seat of Dallas County during this time. The county seat was removed to Selma after the American Civil War. With the collapse of the economy and disease, people began leaving the town, it became a community of freed slaves a site for hunting and fishing camps. Cahaba is now an abandoned town and a state historical site, administered by the Alabama Historical Commission; the Ridge and Valley region of Alabama, where the Cahaba River begins, was formed when the African Plate collided with the North American Plate in the Paleozoic era. The valley soils consist of gravel and clay, while the ridges consist of chert and sandstone; the upper Cahaba region contains Cenozoic-era gravel and sand. In the lower Cahaba region, the soils are calcareous, or chalky; the waters of the Cahaba are home to more than 131 species of freshwater fishes, 40 species of mussels, 35 species of snails. The river has more fish species. Sixty-nine of these animal species are endangered; the endemic freshwater snail Elimia cahawbensis is named after the river.
One species long thought to be extinct, Leptoxis compacta, the Oblong rocksnail, was rediscovered in the Cahaba in 2011. Due to damming for hydropower, pollution and erosion, it has suffered losses of species. A quarter of the original documented mussel species in the Cahaba have disappeared with similar trends in the fish and snail numbers of species. Many species have still been discovered and rediscovered in and on the surrounding region of the river; the Cahaba is home to 13 snail species not found anywhere else in the world. In the early 21st century, a Georgia botanist Jim Allison discovered eight unknown flower species, eight more were identified along the river's course that had not been sited in the state of Alabama; this region is most noted for containing numerous species of snails. These species feed other aquatic dwelling animals, improve water quality by eating algae, indicate environmental issues due to their receptiveness of pollution. Fourteen of the freshwater fish species are non-native species in the Cahaba River.
Among the countless plant species that thrive in and around the Cahaba is Hymenocallis coronaria, known in Al
Red Mountain (Birmingham)
Red Mountain is a long ridge running southwest-northeast and dividing Jones Valley from Shades Valley south of Birmingham, Alabama. It is part of the Ridge-and-Valley region of the Appalachian mountains; the Red Mountain Formation of hard Silurian rock strata lies exposed in several long crests, was named "Red Mountain" because of the rust-stained rock faces and prominent seams of red hematite iron ore. The mountain was the site of the Sloss Mines; the best displays of the mountain's geological strata occur at the Twentieth Street cut near the Vulcan statue and at the U. S. Route 31 highway cut leading into the suburb of Homewood. Most of Birmingham's television and radio stations have their transmission towers located on Red Mountain. Red Mountain is home to Red Mountain Park, one of the largest urban parks in the United States at 1,500 acres. At Birmingham the lower 100 feet is predominantly shaly and there is a 20-foot bed of thick-layered sandstone 34 feet above the bottom. Above this shaly part lies the Irondale ore bed, separated from the Big Seam of iron ore by a few feet of shale and of sandstone layers that carry large and small waterworn pebbles.
Next above lies the Big seam 17 feet thick, above which these is about 38 feet of red sandstone that carries small quartz pebbles, the lower 14 feet of which has yellow shale about equal in amount to sandstone. About 30 feet still higher is the Pentamerus-bearing bed, a ferruginous sandstone full of casts of the interiors of the big brachiopod Pentamerus oblongus. There is still about 70 feet more of sandstone reddish, shale to the top of the Red Mountain formation, making a total thickness in this part of Red Mountain of about 260 feet; the most interesting and valuable feature of the Red Mountain formation is its iron ore, the chief cornerstone of Alabama's industrial structure. Although ore of good quality and of workable thickness occurs elsewhere, as at Attalla, on the Red Mountain along the west side of Murphrees Valley, the main deposit, the Big seam, lies under Shades Valley and the part of the Cahaba coal field southeast of that part of Red Mountain which extends from a point a mile or two southwest of Bessemer to Morrow Gap about 8 miles northeast of Birmingham.
The Red Mountain ores are known as a red fossil ore, because the iron accumulated in extensive beds of fragments of fossils, principally the hard parts of crinoids and brachiopods. The iron, from solution in some form, was precipitated upon and within these beds of fossil fragments and thus the ore beds are a particular kind of sedimentary layers inclosed in ordinary sediments and sandstones, composing the bulk of the Red Mountain formation; as the fossil fragments were composed of calcium carbonate, the mineral that forms limestone, the iron ore beds at depth, where they are unweathered and where there has been no condition that permitted leaching of the lime content, carry a considerable percentage of lime, so that the ore is self-fluxing. Another type of ore is oolite ore, in which the iron oxide occurs in the form of small lenticular pellets; the precipitation of the iron that forms this ore started around some minute particle like a small grain of sand or fragment of fossil and built up a small lenticular body.
The two kinds of ore are more or less mixed or one or the other may predominate in a particular layer of ore. – Geology of Alabama There are many neighborhoods that are located along the 33 miles of Red Mountain, that stretches from Sparks Gap on the southwest to Trussville in the northeast. Some of these are Raimund, Lipscomb, Ishkooda, Irondale and Trussville. Located just southeast of downtown Birmingham, on Red Mountain, is Redmont Park, developed in the 1920s by Robert Jemison, it was the home to Birmingham's early bankers and steel industrialists. It became one of Birmingham's most prominent neighborhoods, home to the majority of the multimillion-dollar residences and estates that are located within the city proper; the prestigious Altamont School, a private school well known for its arts and science programs, is located in the neighborhood, as well as Saint Rose Academy, a Catholic parochial school run by Dominican sisters. The proximity of Red Mountain's ore to nearby sources of coal and limestone was the impetus to develop and promote the Birmingham District as an industrial site.
The mining of iron ore along Red Mountain began in the early 1860s as the Civil War created a demand for iron necessary to sustain the Confederate war efforts. The Union army destroyed the Oxmoor and Tannehill furnaces in 1865 and at this point mining stopped along Red Mountain. After the Civil War the production of iron was again being renewed but this time on a commercial level. Under the leadership of such men as Debardeleben and Woodward the mining of iron ore along Red Mountain began again; the mountain developed a symbolic place as the source of wealth in the region and was portrayed as a character in pageants sponsored by the steel companies in their company towns. In the Altamont and Redmont areas the abandoned mine sites served as the locations for large estates and upper-class developments which offered cool breezes and a panoramic view of the growing industrial city from above the constant layer of thick black smoke. Alex Harvey "Rick" Woodward's home is in this area along Altamont Road.
His home is now owned and maintained by the University of Alabama at Birmingham and used as the residence of the University president. As the steel furnaces modernized, labor cost rose, geological faults in the local
