Hillsboro Trail Parking Traditional Geocache
HotRod205: This one had a good run. Archiving to free up the area for something (hopefully) better, or at least newer. Will remove container this weekend.
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NOTE: Changed to small and moved to much easier area.
The Hillsboro Trail is a beautiful public walking, running, or biking trail that connects the Hillsboro and Old Cahaba neighborhoods and the Helena Middle School. It is a "rails to trails" type project, converting a 130+ year old side rail that went to the coal mines to the south along Coalmont Road in what is now the Cahaba River Wildlife Management Area (CRWMA).
Near here was the location of the Civil War era Hillsboro Coke Ovens, which were near the intersection of this trail and the active rail line just north of here. These ovens cooked the impurities of the raw coal ore out, leaving the purer 'coke' coal which was loaded back onto the rail cars and shipped to the Confederate arms factory near Selma and later to the Oxmoor Iron Furnace and other iron furnaces in Birmingham.
The block outer walls of the ovens were removed in the 1940's and used to make the support piers for the County Road 52 bridge over the Cahaba River about a mile and a half from here, which still stands today. With the outer walls removed, the gravel and rock which surrounded the ovens has collapsed, leaving a long straight pile of rubble that parallels the trail on the other side of the creek. Today there are plans in place to preserve this area and will soon be a historical site.
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