Sloss Furnaces National Historic Site

Birmingham, Alabama – Tuesday, June 6th, 2023

If I had been planning this trip when I was younger it’s likely I would have allotted my entire afternoon in Birmingham to ride Rampage like 25 times. I really don’t need to do that anymore when five or six laps will suffice. I also have a much more interest in (and a better set of tools for) finding and exploring other cultural or natural attractions when I’m someplace new. Once I had the outline of the trip in place, I’d see where I might have an hour or two to spare and research what else in the area might also be worth my attention. One place that caught my eye in Alabama was the Sloss Furnaces, a National Historic Site preserving one of the region’s major blast furnaces.

Birmingham became one of Alabama’s major industrial centers during Reconstruction (which basically was responsible for dragging the South out of the feudal era), with the first furnaces opening nearby in 1888. What eventually became Sloss Furnaces shut down production in 1970, and rather than demolish the site it was nominated as the country’s only 20th century blast furnace to be preserved as a historic industrial site. Today it essentially serves as a U.S. government approved urban exploration zone offering self-guided tours, cleaned up and with a contemporary visitor center to greet people.

While you’re free to explore in whatever order you like, signs and self-guided tour maps suggest a particular route through the site that will take about an hour to complete.

Exploring the center of the facility amid the towering orange hot blast stoves, pipes, and trestles overhead was a humbling experience. With temperatures approaching 90°F today, it was hard to imagine what it was like when these were heating the air at 1400°F.

The tour also takes us into many of the surrounding buildings on site, including through the underground tunnels that would double as protection for the workers if anything went seriously wrong with the furnaces.

Other buildings still contain the machinery used in the production of pig iron, some dating from the early 1900s, others acquired more recently in the 1950s.

The #1 Furnace was where molten iron would be heated at 3800°F before being poured into sand molds along the cast shed behind it.

The last stretch of the tour goes along the edge of the property passing the spray pond and slag pit, providing some good views of the furnaces against the summer sky.

Admission to Sloss Furnaces is free, so the only thing it costs is your time. Given that time was at a premium starting the day in Nashville and finishing in New Orleans, at first I had a little uncertainty if it would be worth it, especially if it came at the expense of a few more rides on Rampage. But it absolutely was. If you like theme parks for being able to wander an immersive environment that tells a story through its layers of details and transports you to a different time and place, historic sites that enable light urban exploration like Sloss Furnaces are a great alternative.

Alabama Adventure

Bessemer, Alabama

Alabama Adventure reminds me a little of Kentucky Kingdom, being smaller parks from the 1990s, filling in gaps in mid-tier metro markets after the theme park boom of the 60s and 70s took all the major cities, named for (but not otherwise themed to) their home state, starting with an entrepreneurial spirit before undergoing several near-deaths and rebirths,¹ each time more dependent on their water park than before. Of course, comparing the size of each park, Kentucky Kingdom has obviously had the much better run of success. Alabama Adventure has Rampage—technically a larger coaster than anything currently at Kentucky Kingdom—but after that the headlining attractions include a wild mouse, a swinging ship… and the list drops off even more quickly after that. In that way it’s maybe closer to Beech Bend, but even that one has a stronger list of supporting attractions.

I don’t want to make too many generalizations about Alabama, which in complete honesty was one of my favorite states in this tour of the South. But my first stop in the state earlier this day was about their loss of industry 50 years ago, and my next stop in the state would be about how the folks who lost that industry were also such huge racists that the fight to overcome them now serves a major sector of the state’s tourist economy. I respect the pride Alabama has for its identity and heritage, but by and large there are still two segregated identities and heritages in competition with each other. However deep or far back it goes, it continues to fuel an economic malaise across the region, and Alabama Adventure hasn’t escaped that trend. Their tagline of “Safe, Clean, Friendly, Fun” is disarmingly simple, far from an aspirational appeal to our higher dreams and ideals one might find at far larger competitors. It’s a slogan both positive yet defensive, instantly calling attention to its antonyms of “those other places” which the conservative target audience assuredly holds their own mental images. There are parts of the country where the words “safe” and “clean” are loaded with far more meaning than others.

Yet at least this advertising doesn’t lie. There may not be much to this park, but they cover the fundamentals as well as could be reasonably asked for. Just have one killer wooden coaster, maintain it well, keep the parking easy and the restrooms clean, and do it with a smile so I can come and go for what I wanted without any FOMO over the rest of a large yet mediocre ride collection. My visit here lasted a total of one hour and forty-five minutes, and that was more than enough. A joke sign involving a “weather rock” counts as one of the dry park’s largest and most unique attractions. I didn’t even take advantage of their free soft drink program because the only options were heavily sugared beverages that make for poor hydration on a humid 90°F day. (Did I mention we’re in Alabama?)

Rampage

At 120 feet tall and 3,500 feet long, Rampage is a big coaster. Larger than any other wooden coaster built in the United States since 2006, but when it opened in 1998 as one of six major American wooden coasters including GhostRider and Shivering Timbers, Rampage felt more like an easily overlooked mid-tier contender. It doesn’t help that the ride was technically a clone of 1996’s Megafobia,² although in a rarity for a modified clone, Rampage was scaled up in height and length by about 20%.

The result is a coaster that lives up to its name, with several powerful speed hills, fast lateral-heavy swoop turns and flat curves, and a few sharp surprise dips, especially one near the end of the layout to keep it interesting to the end. Nothing too unique from the standard CCI formula, but done with an even higher level of aggressiveness to deliver one of the most intense coasters in the South. One other difference from its Welsh counterpart is the main brake run is positioned much higher than the station, resulting in a fun little swoop curve and steeply inclined brake into the station after the ride was seemingly over.

All else being equal, in this case bigger would likely mean slightly better, except the higher forces have also resulted in a somewhat rougher, more temperamental ride. In particular some of the midcourse airtime hills were jackhammering quite severely during the 2023 season, which limited the appeal of a ride that otherwise would have had a pretty good mix of airtime to laterals. To their credit, the owners had been undertaking an ambitious multi-year effort to completely retrack Rampage that were definitely appreciated where fresh wood was present, but there were still plenty of rough patches. It seemed likely that by the time they completed a full multi-year retracking the oldest portions would be due for yet another overhaul, creating an endless and expensive cycle. Unsurprisingly, to escape this cycle Rampage sat closed for the following 2024 season as the high stress areas were slated to be replaced with steel rails not unlike what I had just encountered at Beech Bend the prior day; as of this writing it’s unknown how extensive the steel replacement is, who is carrying it out, or if it will even reopen for the 2025 season.

Cheddar Chase

I wasn’t expecting much from this L&T Systems wild mouse, smaller than the average wild mouse coaster, but it was actually pretty fun. Smooth yet with sharp laterals, a fresh paint job and cute cars. A particular highlight is a hairpin turn in the middle of the layout with a support column positioned directly in front of it, creating one of the most effective fake-out collision effects I’ve ever experienced on a coaster.

The biggest issue is despite all the empty real estate scattered across the park when the previous ownership packed up and left, this coaster is positioned on a flat parcel at the top of a hill with a long, lonely hike to reach. In this weather, even many of the local Alabamans would look at the route and the small coaster at the end of it and say “no thank you.” I liked it, but not enough to overcome the awkwardness of circling around for a reride all by myself up there, and thus decided to head back down to eventually get on the road to New Orleans sooner.

Next: New Orleans

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