Photo by Savannah Schmidt.
Sibyl Temple overlooking U.S. 31 in Vestavia Hills on Nov. 6.
When U.S. 31 and U.S. 280 jam with holiday traffic, it’s hard to believe that Vestavia Hills was once an inaccessible plot of wilderness.
In “Vestavia Hills, Alabama: A Place Apart,” author Marvin Yeomans Whiting explained that while settlement occurred in other areas in Alabama during 1815, both “Shades Valley and Shades Mountain were wild places.”
“Part of the reason for the slow settlement of the area was its inaccessibility,” Yeomans says in the book. “Not one of the early roads in Jefferson County crossed the valley and then scaled the mountain in the area [that is] now the site of Vestavia Hills.”
The first attempts at creating an accessible route to settle occurred in 1907. After determining that a street railway would prove unsuccessful, the South Birmingham Heights Land Company sought a drivable route for Vestavia. At this time, however, U.S. 31 and U.S. 280 were dirt roads that could become a death trap for travelers in a storm.
As a result, the land plotted for Vestavia Hills did not come under construction until 1916, when Edgar Jones Smyer invested in a road connecting his new residence on Shades Mountain to U.S. 31 and Cahaba Road.
Until the paving of the two highways in the late 1930s, Vestavia Hills landowners continued to create roads linking their residences to accessible routes around Birmingham. As you drive up into the hills, imagine passing into the wilderness on a dirt road, approaching the estates that would define the layout of Vestavia in the years to come.
