Tucked away between two highways and a tiny kingdom there’s a Birmingham neighborhood taking life at its own pace. Cahaba Heights was a hamlet that became a town that became a suburb, in all iterations remaining a distinct place, since the geography of a town is its frontal lobe and only a massive effort can truly change the hills and rivers and hollers the first inhabitants encountered.

In 1887 New Merkle was a factory town with a singular purpose:  pump water to the booming new city of Birmingham, Alabama. W.A. Merkle oversaw the construction and operation of the Cahaba Pumping Station, and soon folks took up residence in the hilly, muddy streets around the handful of brick buildings pumping millions of gallons of water over Red Mountain to slake the endless thirst of the foundries and mills.  

There’s never been much to do in Cahaba Heights. A few parks and three or so retail developments, fairly parochial. And yet. Sidewalks wind through lush, verdant lower Appalachian flora, residents care about the development and future of their little corner of town, and the local shops are mostly small businesses that have long-standing relationships with their customers and community. That spirit of community, wherein an owner-operated strip mall restaurant like Troup’s Pizza welcomes a woodworker from Homewood to sell handmade toy cars at a Christmas time market, is easy to fake and rare to find springing up organically.  

The food scene in Cahaba Heights, as is true for the greater Birmingham area, is astoundingly better than one should expect for a third tier American city. There are two premium biscuit restaurants, a place where cute people can go get cute coffees, and a Chick-Fil-A next door to a Zaxby’s. Miss Myra’s has served bar-b-que since 1984, and if you aren’t interested in that there’s a full-hog bar-b-que place six minutes down the road.  The same road. The Fig, which gets pork products from acorn-fed pigs and passionately experiments with seasonal and regional dishes, shares a repurposed house with a hair salon. You can get an outrageously good chocolate milkshake at Local Roots then go find the sweetest, ripest peaches in the world at Murphree’s and Murphree’s will sell you locally made frozen entrees that will make you text your momma a gif of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock.

People in Cahaba Heights love having local options, whether it’s children’s clothes at the Lili Pad, prime ribeye steaks at New York Butcher Shoppe, same-day gulf shrimp at Sexton’s Seafood or custom jewelry at Cummings Jewelry Design. There’s a comic book store down the way from a jiu jitsu studio, both of which are across a parking lot from incredible sorbet and a terrific Mediterranean cafe. It’s like Adam Smith curated a handful of strip malls’ worth of storefronts that could supply a middle class person’s life from cradle to (almost) grave (Cahaba Heights doesn’t have a funeral home).  

There’s not much to do in Cahaba Heights. But the doing is really great if you’re satisfied with what you’ve got, which is a special thing in America. More people should try it.