[2] In 1883, William Henry Ruffner, a professor at Roanoke College who had served as Virginia's first superintendent of public instruction and who had trained as geologist at Washington & Lee University,[4] and John L. Campbell completed a survey for the Georgia Pacific Railway from Atlanta to the Mississippi River, including the Birmingham District.

It attracted the interest of Georgia Pacific directors in acquiring mineral lands and furnace works in the Birmingham District.

The Ruffner Mountain Nature Coalition, a nonprofit organization formed in 1977, presently leases 28 acres of the former mining site from the City of Birmingham.

The land includes the abandoned limestone quarry in which the fossil remains of ancient sealife (bryozoans, brachipods and corals) are well-exposed.

1977 marked the beginning of the Ruffner Mountain Nature Coalition, a nonprofit that leased 28 acres of land belonging to the City of Birmingham for protection and preservation.