Photo courtesy of Birmingham, Ala. Public Library Archives.
1113 Edgewood Lake History
Edgewood Lake covered 117.4 acres along what is now Lakeshore Drive. The intersection of Broadway and what would become Green Springs Highway as well as portions of the old Columbiana Road can be seen in this photo of the lake looking down from Shades Mountain across Shades Valley. Red Mountain is in the background. At the lake's shore the new road to Columbiana intersects North Lakeshore Drive and turns west to cross the lake's dam.
Edgewood Lake today lives only in the memories of old people and in history books. But when my parents and I moved to our new house on Columbiana Road in February 1942, it was a beautiful man-made body of water. Fed by Shades Creek and by the little creeks and drainage ditches that flowed rainwater into Shades Creek from as far away as Homewood and Mountain Brook, the lake was nestled at the foot of Shades Mountain. The road to Columbiana crossed over the dam and then climbed up the mountain.
The Birmingham Motor and Country Club acquired the property in 1914 and soon afterward began clearing the lake bed and building a dam across Shades Creek. The lake covered 117.4 acres and attracted fishermen who could reach the lake by the streetcar line that ended at the lake’s northern shore. Patrons who rode the streetcar learned to be careful not to step on the cane poles, corks and hooks that were resting on the floor.
The original design called for a motor speedway around the lake, which was patterned after the one in Indianapolis. Although the north and south runs were graded and eventually became Lakeshore and South Lakeshore Drives, the raceway was never completed. The Motor Club did finish the clubhouse on a rise overlooking the northern shore of the lake, and it became the Edgewood Country Club. They also built a dance pavilion over the lake in front of the clubhouse. The Valley View Swimming Pool was next to the dance pavilion.
Shades Creek, normally a slow-moving bubbling creek, flooded into a raging stream with steady rains and sent high waters over Shades Creek Parkway, Lakeshore Drive and Columbiana Road. At least twice, in 1923 and 1935, the dam broke under such pressure. When this happened, the lake would empty down Oxmoor Valley, leaving the bed muddy, then dry, and plants and trees would soon grow beside the winding channel of Shades Creek.
In 1923, the Birmingham Motor and Country Club was dissolved. The clubhouse remained and was operated by R.R. Rochelle as Edgewood Park. Birmingham civic and fraternal groups and families held barbecues, dances and picnics there.
But the most infamous event that occurred on the dry lakebed happened on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 1923, when the Robert E. Lee Klan, No. 1, the oldest and largest Klan in Jefferson County sponsored a mass initiation ceremony on the lake bed. Many area Klansmen came to Edgewood to participate. Klan leaders from Atlanta and all over the state and the South attended.
The Birmingham News reported that 25,000 people made their way to Edgewood that night to watch the initiation ceremony, and half that many more were stuck in traffic jams. They never reached the lake bed to see the thousands of white robed Klansmen, the new initiates, the burning crosses, torches, and red, white and blue fireworks. Cars were parked in a tangled mess on the sides of streets and roads for miles.
In later years, many male Edgewood residents (women would not have dared to be seen there) shared memories of watching the spectacle that night. The most famous initiate was a talented and ambitious Birmingham lawyer from Clay County who was destined for greatness as an Alabama U.S. Senator and U.S. Supreme Court Justice — Hugo LaFayette Black.
Edgewood Lake, which was a shallow lake, froze over several times in the cold winters of the 1930s, and one time I remember in 1945. Residents who had ice skates had great fun while we Southern children enjoyed watching.
In the years after the Great Depression, Edgewood Lake became a burden to nearby property owners who didn’t like the fishermen and riffraff that came to the lake. Neither the county nor any city government would spend money to keep the lake and dam in good repair. Depression-era government agencies could not help because they could not spend money on privately owned properties. In 1940, the Investor’s Syndicate of Minneapolis, which then held title to the land, deeded the land to Jefferson County in a right-of-way agreement. From then on nothing was done.
Cars traveling too fast down the new Green Springs Highway sometimes went over the bank into the lake. In the early 1940s, Mr. Weaver, who operated a filling station and grocery store on Green Springs Highway at Broadway, went off the road into the lake and drowned late one night during a rainstorm.
Jefferson County drained the lake in spring 1946, supposedly for improvements and dam repairs. Trees grew in the lakebed, but boys, men and hobos continued to fish in the deep holes of the creek. It was a wilderness inhabited by snakes and animals. The City of Homewood, nearby residents and the County Commissioners squabbled over what to do and who would pay for it.
And the lake was gone forever.
Leah Rawls Atkins, Ph.D., is a historian who grew up in the 1940s on Columbiana Road a block from the Edgewood Lake dam. She taught history for almost three decades at Auburn and Samford Universities.
