18 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF ALABAMA. 
generally increase their rate of dip as they approach the 
fault. 
The first regular, systematic underground mining in this 
coal field, was done at a mine opened in the Montevallo 
seam at a point about one mile northwest of the Montevallo 
Coal and Transportation Company’s present slope, west of 
Montevallo about three miles; this was about the year 
1856 ; it was commenced by private individuals, and then 
the Alabama Coal Mining Company was formed, composed 
of Johe M. Moore of Talladega, Judge Cooper of Lowndes 
county, Dr. Miller of Wilcox county, and others. (This 
was probably the first underground mining done in this 
State.) 
The demand for coal and iron made by the Confederate 
Government during the war, gave a new impetus to mining 
coal in this field, and, and new mines were opened near 
Helena, between Boothtown, and Gurnee, at Dailey Creek, 
and at the Montevallo Mines, and also to the southwest of 
Dailey Creek. 
Prior to the war, the demand for coal in the whole state 
was not over ten or eleven thousand tons per annum. For 
a number of years after the war closed, the demand for 
coal in Alabama was not much greater than the above. 
The demonstration had not then been made, that our coal 
was suitable for smelting iron. 
For a number of years after the close of the war, capi- 
talists refused to risk their money in the then doubtful en- 
terprise of building coke furnaces to decide the case as to 
whether our coals would smelt our ores or not. 
The tendency then was to invest in efforts to make cotton 
with recently liberated slaves, which generally ended in 
disaster and loss. Matters remained in this condition after 
the war between the states ended, until the year 1870, when 
Henry F. DeBardeleben, with a boldness and enterprise 
that he has shown in many similar cases since then, launched 
a hundred thousand dollars into the rebuilding of the partly 
destroyed Red Mountain iron furnaces at Oxmoor, where it 
was eventually demonstrated that our coal would smelt 
our iron ores, a fact that we had long craved to see proved 
beyond dispute, He displayed still greater enterprise in 
