Birmingham sits in the Jones Valley of central Alabama, a city founded on iron and steel in the 1800s. The Magic City grew fast around mines, furnaces, and railroads, and that industrial past still shows at Sloss Furnaces, a former blast furnace site now open as a museum. The Vulcan statue, a giant iron figure of the Roman god of the forge, stands atop Red Mountain and looks out over the city. Downtown, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the 16th Street Baptist Church mark the city's central role in the civil rights movement, and Railroad Park offers green space beside the tracks.