Former Tide quarterback Jalen Hurts led the Vulcans to a huge vict'ry in Week 7 of the BDFL

Iron Man

Birmingham's own iconic Vulcan statue

BIRMINGHAM, AL - The Vulcan statue is the largest cast iron statue in the world, and the city symbol of Birmingham, Alabama. Known commonly as “Vulcan”, he stands high atop Red Mountain overlooking the city of Birmingham to the north and mooning the city of Homewood to the south. Vulcan’s roots are in the city’s the iron and steel industry. The "Iron Man" statue stands 56-feet tall and he depicts the Roman god Vulcan (the god of the fire and forge) along with ironworking equipment (anvil, block, hammer, and spearpoint). The Vulcan statue was created as Birmingham's entry for the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis and brought home the “Grand Prize”. If you've been to two World's Fairs and one GF, you probably think you've seen it all. While Vulcan is the world's largest statue made of cast iron, he is also among the nation's tallest statues of any kind. Commissioned by the Commercial Club of Birmingham, Italian-born sculptor Giuseppe Moretti began designing the monumental figure in 1903, using a 6-foot-tall model to study the form. Moretti next sculpted a clay master model in an unfinished church in Passaic, New Jersey, and this was then divided into sections and transported by railroad to the Birmingham Steel and Iron Company for casting molds for the iron. The Commercial Club of Birmingham held art shows, concerts, baseball games, and other activities to raise the estimated cost to build and transport the statue. Pot metal statuettes of Vulcan were sold at both the St. Louis World's Fair and in Birmingham for two dollars apiece to help fund the costs to create the statue. The 29 individual grey iron castings that make up Vulcan were made entirely in Birmingham from locally produced iron. When the 1904 World's Fair ended, the Vulcan statue was dismantled and returned to Birmingham and reassembled at the Fairgrounds. It was not until 1936 that the statue found its final home atop Red Mountain. In 2023 when the BDFL had to replace the departing Mt. High Blue Deacons, the league made the obvious move to add the North Birmingham Vulcans in another effort to honor the “Iron Man” as the World Football League’s (WFL) Birmingham Vulcans originally did back in 1975.