Hoover Historical Society dedicates new Sunset Rock marker at Lover's Leap

The Hoover Historical Society on Tuesday dedicated a new plaque at the Sunset Rock lookout point next to the Lover’s Leap historical site in Bluff Park.

The plaque is located down a short pathway off Shades Crest Road, just southwest of Tip Top Grill, on top of limestone rocks that have a steep dropoff.

The plaque marks Sunset Rock, where a former prominent lawyer and judge from Elyton (a town later annexed into Birmingham) carved the first four lines of Lord Byron’s poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” into a limestone rock that had a scenic view of Shades Valley below, Hoover Historical Society President Jim Langley said.

The former judge, Thomas Wadsworth Farrar, carved the lines into the rock in 1827, and it became a popular place for people to visit, Langley said. In the 1930s, the part of the rock with the inscription was chiseled out of the mountain and placed in a Masonic Lodge in Elyton that was founded by Farrar.

Residents in the Bluff Park area were upset that their landmark had been taken, Langley said. “It was a really big stink.”

After a failed attempt to reclaim the rock from the Masons, Birmingham Mayor George Ward and Thomas Martin in 1937 funded a replica of the inscription on a rock next to the original site in Bluff Park, Langley said.

In 1963, after years of neglect, the Shades Mountain Scenic Association sued a landowner who refused public access to Sunset Rock, Langley said. A judge sided with the association and ruled that the rock and pathway to it from Shades Crest Road were indeed public property, he said.

In 1973, the Shades Mountain Garden Club made improvements to the site, putting up a historical marker for Lover’s Leap (which has its own story), an improved stone pathway leading to Sunset Rock, and some landscaping. In February 2004, a new metal fence was put around the inscription in the limestone rock to better protect it, Langley said.

Over time, the inscription on Sunset Rock has gotten harder to read, and weeds and brush grew up around it. Langley did some work on the rock to make the inscription more visible, and this past weekend, the Hoover Historical Society held a cleanup day to clear away some of the overgrown brush at the rock and along the path leading to it.

WBRC Fox 6 meteorologist Fred Hunter, known for his “Absolutely Alabama” series, helped dedicate the new Sunset Rock plaque Tuesday after speaking to the Hoover Historical Society at the Hoover-Randal Home & Gardens.

Langley and his wife, Ann, paid for the aluminum historic marker at Sunset Rock.

He thinks Lover’s Leap/Sunset Rock is one of the most intriguing historical sites in Hoover and hopes to share its history with more people. The marker more clearly gives the words that are inscribed on the rock.

Lover’s Leap got its name from an old Creek Indian story about a Creek brave called Cheeto who fell in love with a beautiful Creek princess named Sehoy, Langley said.

But the head of Cheeto’s clan arranged for him to be married to a woman from another clan.

Cheeto refused, but his prospective bride would not renounce the wedding. They were on a large rock on Shades Mountain overlooking Shades Valley when he told her he would not marry her, Langley said. She became angry and lunged at him, and he instinctively drew his bone hunting knife and, before thinking, plunged the knife into her heart, the story goes.

Feeling remorse at what he had done, he grabbed the woman into his arms and jumped to his death on the rocks below.

The actual Lover’s Leap rock supposedly is on the Tip Top Grill property, but the Lover’s Leap historical marker is nearby, along Shades Crest Road, at the top of the trail leading to Sunset Rock.