The Historic Community of Bluff Park, AL

     Bluff Park sits on the summit of Shades Mountain which is an example of a "cuesta" - a mountain with a steep face or escarpment on one side and a long gentle slope on the other.  On the crest of the steep northwestern face of the mountain Bluff Park offers dramatic vistas of Shades Valley below and Red Mountain to the north.  In the other direction land slopes gently away from the crest toward the commercial and residential developments along Hwy. 31 and Hwy. 150 and the Galleria shopping complex.  According to geologists, Shades Mountain is part of a formation that stretches northward as far as Pennsylvania.  The underlying rock and jutting rock formations that line the crest are primarily sandstone, originally formed in rivers.  Although the rocky outcroppings discouraged large scale agriculture in Bluff Park, early settlers had small farms, dairies, orchards, and sawmills.

     Although small cabins had been built on the mountaintop as early as the 1820s to be used as refuge in times of cholera epidemics in Elyton, the first landowner to take advantage of the magnificent view and the mineral springs to attract visitors to the area was Octavia Spencer.  In the 1850s he built forty log cabins and a pavilion for a summer resort (known as Spencer Springs) for guests who came from Elyton, Montgomery, Selma, and other areas of the state.  Guests walked down from the crest to two springs - one with freestone water and the other "the finest chalybeate water" -- which were believed to have medicinal benefits.  In 1863 Gardner Hale, formerly superintendent of the Daniel Pratt Cotton Gin Factory at Prattville, purchased the property, renamed it Hale Springs, and continued to rent the cabins to guests.  At about the same time the Oxmoor Furnaces were constructed in the valley below.  Destroyed in the Civil War, the furnaces were rebuilt in the Reconstruction era.

     Hale's children continued to manage the resort after his death in 1880 and added to boarding houses.  A new road,  opened in 1892, provided easier access to the bluff by means of "tallyhos," horse-drawn coaches which brought guests from the valley below.  Guests from Birmingham (founded in 1871) and other parts of the state could travel to Oxmoor by train and notify Hale Springs that they needed transportation by ringing a bell.  As wells were dug on the mountain top, the springs lost their importance and the area became known as Bluff Park.  The view continued to attract visitors, some of whom built cabins and cottages to be used in the summer, some who camped in tents, and some who stayed at the Bluff Park Hotel, built in 1907.  Although the hotel burned in 1925, many of the original cottages and homes of the settlement can still be seen, now intermixed with later residences built as improved roads and transportation made Bluff Park attractive as a Birmingham suburb of permanent residences.

     Two of the early Bluff Park homes still extant have connections with the Hale family.  The Hale-Joseph home, built in 1910 by William M. and Evan Hale, was constructed on land purchased in the 1860s by Gardner Hale.  Placed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 1994, the home is currently owned by Carlo and Dianne Joseph.

     The Overseer's Home, built in 1889 and probably the oldest extant dwelling in Bluff Park, served as the residence for the manager of the A.B. Howell Peach Orchard, a 560-acre commercial farm begin in 1882.  Howell, an absentee landowner, moved from Ohio to Chattanooga in 1880 and organized a successful fruit business.  The house originally consisted of three rooms and a dirt floor.  One of the overseers who resided in the home was William Hale.  William and his brother Evan went on to operate a sawmill, ice house, and cotton gin and did much to develop Bluff Park as a community of permanent residents.  William built several of the present historic homes on Shades Crest Road.  Listed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 2000, the Overseer's Home is currently owned by John and Marie Taylor.

     The Bluff Park Elementary School on Park Avenue, which replaced the original one-room Summit School built in 1899, is now the Bluff Park Community School.  Fittingly, the Hoover Historical Society is now headquartered in the Community School.  The HHS is not only interested in preserving the history and heritage of Hoover and the Bluff Park community but also in bringing Alabama history alive to the students in the area schools.  The Society was instrumental in creating a Folklore Center on the grounds of the elementary school-- the "Stinson Ole Place," a fully restored 1840s log home with accompanying outbuildings.

     To obtain a feel for the sights enjoyed by the early visitors to the nineteenth century resort destination, one can still visit "Lover's Leap", a dramatic rock outcropping off Shades Crest Road.  Those early resort goers would have seen miles and miles of trees with an occasional glimpse of Shades Creek in the valley below.  In the evening the glow from the Oxmoor Furnaces would have competed with the sunset for attention.  Today's visitors can still enjoy the sunsets but the vast expanse of trees in the valley is now interrupted by sprawling development, including residential neighborhoods and a golf course.