Birmingham was founded on June 1, 1871, by the Elyton Land Company, whose investors included cotton planters, bankers and railroad entrepreneurs.

The city is notable for its proximity to nearby deposits of iron ore, coal, and limestone--the three main raw materials used in making steel. In fact, Birmingham is the only place in the world where all three ingredients can be found within a ten-mile radius.

Red Mountain earned its name because of the rust-stained rock faces and prominent seams of red hematite iron ore that supplied Birmingham's iron furnaces.

From the start the new city was planned as a center of industry. To emphasize this point, the city's founders named it in honor of Birmingham, England, which was then one of the world's premier industrial cities.

The statue of the Roman god Vulcan, god of the fire and forge, is the largest cast iron statue in the world and is the city symbol of Birmingham, Alabama, reflecting its roots in the iron and steel industry. It was created as Birmingham's entry for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 World's Fair) in St. Louis, Missouri.

Some white residents, unhappy with social changes and with easy access to dynamite because of the local mining industry, bombed the houses of black families who moved into new neighborhoods or were politically active, earning Birmingham the nickname "Bombingham". The most famous of these bombings killed four black girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in September 1963, sparking national outrage and leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

While imprisoned in April 1963 for having taken part in a nonviolent protest, Dr. King wrote the now famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail", which says that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take direct action rather than waiting (potentially forever) for justice to come through the courts. King's letter was widely published, and became an important text for the American Civil Rights Movement.

In the early 1900s, James "Slag" Wormwood, foreman of the graveyard shift at Sloss Furnaces, led a group of over 100 workers who lived in cramped housing on the furnace site, forcing them to take dangerous risks to speed up production. 47 workers lost their lives and numerous others lost their ability to work due to horrific accidents. According to legend, workers eventually tired of Slag's harassment and fed him to the furnace in October of 1906. After his disappearance, employees began complaining of an "unnatural presence" in the worksite, including three supervisors who were found unconscious and locked in a small boiler room, only to emerge with stories of a severely burned man who shouted at them to "push more steel."

Alabama native Hank Williams spent the last night of his life at Birmingham's Redmont Hotel before leaving for a New Year's Day performance January 1, 1953, in Canton, Ohio. Somewhere along the way, Williams' friend and driver found him dead in the back of his famous blue Cadillac.

Between 1902 and 1912, four large office buildings were constructed at the intersection of 20th Street, the central north-south spine of the city, and 1st Avenue North, which connected the warehouses and industrial facilities along the east-west railroad corridor. This early group of skyscrapers was nicknamed the "Heaviest Corner on Earth".