Enon Ridge is one of five neighborhoods in Birmingham’s Smithfield Community, alongside College Hills, East Thomas, Graymont, and Smithfield. It covers about 180 acres along the ridge that separates Jones Valley to the south from Opossum Valley to the north, with Village Creek at its northern edge.

First settled by Black laborers, Enon Ridge became one of Birmingham’s leading residential neighborhoods for African American professionals in the first half of the 20th century. Residents included bandleader Erskine Hawkins, Birmingham World editor Emory Jackson, and funeral director C. M. Harris. Social worker and educator Carrie A. Tuggle founded a home for orphaned children here in 1903; it grew into the Tuggle Institute and is today Tuggle Elementary.

Enon Ridge was the original home of Sardis Missionary Baptist Church, now Old Sardis Baptist Church, and of Enon Methodist Episcopal Church. The historic Enon Ridge Cemetery and Knesseth-Israel Cemetery are here too. The Dorothy Spears Greenway, on a former rail bed along Bankhead Highway, forms the neighborhood’s southwestern edge; it and the Enon Ridge Trail were among the first segments of the Village Creek Blueway in the Red Rock Ridge and Valley Trail System.

BhamWiki: Enon Ridge · Last verified September 2026