With leaves beginning to change, hikers will be returning to the slopes of Red Mountain Park as a series of monthly preview hikes begins this Sunday.

Hosted by the volunteer group, Friends of Red Mountain Park, the hikes are the principal opportunity for the public to get a look at the 1,200-acre public park under development on a section of Red Mountain west of Interstate 65. Park planners have ambitions to open the park in 2012.

In the meantime, the property -- formerly owned by U.S. Steel -- is being combed by archeologists in advance of any construction. RMP Executive Director David Dionne said there are six major digs planned in the coming year exploring long-vanished mining camps and historic mine sites.

"We have come to recognize that Red Mountain Park is one of the nation's largest industrial archeology sites," he said.

Beginning during the Civil War and continuing into the early 1960s, iron ore mined from Red Mountain fed Birmingham's iron and steel industries. The mountain was honeycombed with mines and crisscrossed with railroads that moved ore from the mountain to the steel mills in Jones Valley.

After decades of forest regeneration, those old railroad lines are being turned into paths through the woods that eventually will circle the mountain at a gentle grade. That hard-surfaced loop will comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Beyond that, volunteers, including several Boy Scouts pursuing their Eagle rank, continue to expand a trail system that will rise and fall in the mountain's folds and traverse its ridges, which overlook Birmingham to the north and the Oxmoor Valley to the south.

Dionne said archeological research in the area where a 20-acre lake is planned is receiving priority, so that after its completion, work on that central feature of the planned park can begin. Major hurdles the park faces before it can open are the construction of an entrance road off Lakeshore Drive and provisions for parking.

The park's land, which is in the Birmingham city limits and owned by the state of Alabama, is managed by The Red Mountain Park and Greenway Commission, an appointed body charged with the park's construction and management.

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