Monte Sano is a horseshoe-shaped mountain in Madison County

Madison County, Alabama

Madison County is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is a major part of the Huntsville Metropolitan Area.It is also included in the merged Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistical Area. The county is named in honor of James Madison, fourth President of the United States of America, and the...

, Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

 beside the city of Huntsville

Huntsville, Alabama

Huntsville is a city located primarily in Madison County in the central part of the far northern region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Huntsville is the county seat of Madison County. The city extends west into neighboring Limestone County. Huntsville's population was 180,105 as of the 2010 Census....

. The top is relatively flat and lies just under 500 meters above sea level. This elevation is about 300 meters higher than the floor of the Tennessee

Tennessee River

The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately 652 miles long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names...

 Valley, which surrounds it. A residential neighborhood occupies the western portion of the top. The eastern portion and slopes of the mountain are occupied by Monte Sano State Park

Monte Sano State Park

Monte Sano State Park is a mountaintop retreat located in Huntsville, Alabama. It has 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps rustic cottages, built during the Great Depression, and a prime location with hiking trails overlooking scenic views, picnic areas, and modern campsites...

.

Much of the western slope of the mountain is encompassed in the Monte Sano Preserve and is owned by The Land Trust of Huntsville and North Alabama, a member-supported, non-profit organization dedicated to preserving greenspace. It is one of three mountain preserves in the area, maintained by Land Trust volunteers.

Monte Sano is connected to Round Top (Burritt) Mountain by a col

Mountain pass

A mountain pass is a route through a mountain range or over a ridge. If following the lowest possible route, a pass is locally the highest point on that route...

 to the south.

The name Monte Sano is Italian for "mount of health" (Italian for "mountain" is "montagna"). This name comes from the fact that curative health resorts used to be located on the mountain, to take advantage of the fresh air, clean water and cooler temperatures.

Geologically, Monte Sano is a mesa

Mesa

A mesa or table mountain is an elevated area of land with a flat top and sides that are usually steep cliffs. It takes its name from its characteristic table-top shape....

 separated from the main Cumberland Plateau

Cumberland Plateau

The Cumberland Plateau is the southern part of the Appalachian Plateau. It includes much of eastern Kentucky and western West Virginia, part of Tennessee, and a small portion of northern Alabama and northwest Georgia . The terms "Allegheny Plateau" and the "Cumberland Plateau" both refer to the...

 by the Flint River

Flint River (Alabama)

The Flint River, long and draining an area of , is a tributary to the Tennessee River. The river rises in Lincoln County, Tennessee, and flows south into Madison County, Alabama, where most of the river'swatershed is located. The land within this watershed is predominantly agricultural and has...

 Valley. It is characterized by a resistant sandstone caprock of the Pennsylvanian

Pennsylvanian

The Pennsylvanian is, in the ICS geologic timescale, the younger of two subperiods of the Carboniferous Period. It lasted from roughly . As with most other geochronologic units, the rock beds that define the Pennsylvanian are well identified, but the exact date of the start and end are uncertain...

 Pottsville Formation

Pottsville Formation

The Pennsylvanian Pottsville Formation is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, western Maryland, West Virginia, and Ohio. The formation is also recognized in Alabama. It is a major ridge-former In the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of the eastern United States...

 overlying more soluble layers of Mississippian limestone. The Mississippian limestone is rich in marine fossils, especially crinoid

Crinoid

Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea of the echinoderms . Crinoidea comes from the Greek word krinon, "a lily", and eidos, "form". They live both in shallow water and in depths as great as 6,000 meters. Sea lilies refer to the crinoids which, in their adult form, are...

s and blastoid

Blastoid

Blastoids are an extinct type of stemmed echinoderm. Often called sea buds, blastoid fossils look like small hickory nuts. They originated, along with many other echinoderm classes, in the Ordovician period and reached their greatest diversity in the Mississippian subperiod of the Carboniferous...

s.