Return to Milestones Vol. 2, No. 2
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Most Pennsylvania residents, especially those who live in districts of heavy industry, recognize a modern blast-furnace when they see one. With such recognition they probably also know that this lofty steel-clad facility distinctive in its, grimy complex of domed heatingovens, mechanical skip-hoists, networks of piping, and colorful exudations, produces a portion of the basic iron that is used in making today's steel.
Would most of the same people, however be able to identify a blastfurnace of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century and know much about its history? I doubt it, even though a goodly number of these forerunners of the modern blast-furnace yet exist. These early American furnaces were quite different from their modern counterparts .... being built of stone throughout! Generally speaking, their form resembles that of a small pyramid whose apex had been cut off at a height of thirty-five or forty feet. On at least two of their sloping sides, archways were let into the base and extended to the "inner-stack" so, that workers could accomplish the air-blast and tapping processes. The first such stone stack to be erected and operated successfully on this continent was one built along the Saugus River, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, about 1643 and was patterned after furnaces of the British Isles. Following this, many more were put "in blast" as the demand for iron and iron products increased with the expanding population. Iron-ore was found abundant in several natural forms, hardwood timber was everywhere available to provide a purifying smelting-combustive and limestone or lime-bearing substances were plentiful as fluxing agents. By the time the American Colonies were united in the Revolutionary War, the stone blast furnaces were well established upon the industrial scene. Skilled artisans to construct and work the furnaces became increasingly available and those "men of iron" contributed much toward the struggle for independence. George Taylor, owner and ironmaster of Durham Furnace on the Delaware River, was a signer of the "declaration" and armaments from his iron-facility were applied to the war effort. Iron-trade "scows" from the Durham Furnace boat fleet were borrowed by George Washington to float his troops on their "crossing" of the Delaware River.
Iron was an item of great importance to a young nation at war but, following the Revolution, it's domestic applications in the new American society became unlimited and scores of the stone-built smelters were contrived to produce it. These furnaces cast increasingly larger amounts of pig-iron to be sent to forges, to infant rolling-mills, and to slitting-mills where sheet-iron, bar-iron, and precious iron nails were manufactured. Some of the iron went to blacksmiths who transformed it into the hardware, tools, and implements that were much needed in the agrarian culture. Many of the early ironmasters, in addition to casting pig-iron at their furnaces, employed molders at the casting-sheds so that ready-to-use iron products, such as firebacks and stoveplates, could be cast upon the premises. Iron pots and kettles were cast by the thousands at some furnaces. Settlers, bound for the frontiers, often took a supply of these iron articles with them but it wasn't long until frontier furnaces were operating. Wilderness areas that had only shortly before echoed to chanting Indians at their flickering night lodge-fires soon resounded to the throaty roar of furnaces in blast, the whack of axes felling charcoal-hardwoods, and the banter of the iron tradesmen. The glow of native campfires were replaced by the garish intermittent streaks of smelting fires that reflected orange traceries on virgin treetops, rising smoke columns, and remote night skies. The earliest of these frontier furnaces to appear west of Pennsylvania's formidable Allegheny Mountains was Alliance Furance built in 1789 on Jacobs Creek. Between that year and 1862, nearly two-hundred more of those stone crucibles were erected in western Pennsylvania. Only two of that number were located within the environs of Pittsburgh. Most had their locale at some far-flung or backwoods place in Penn's Woods West. Although the actual furnace site was dependent to a degree upon a source of fieldstone for building material, much more important was the availability of iron-ore, limestone, and timber. Water power for working the air-blast bellows and steep hillsides to facilitate furnace-top charging were factors responsible for most furnaces being in valleys and ravines.
Thus did many of our forebears labor at those pioneer facilities and make their mark in the early-American iron industry. Although two of the old stone furnaces in western Pennsylvania produced iron until 1890, the others of their kind had gradually succumbed to a changing economy, advanced technology, and an ever increasing demand for cheaper iron. In short, they could not compete with larger metal-clad furnaces located at strategic centers of *industry where high-yield ore from the west was delivered by rail and water transport. Some owners of the stone furnaces had experimented with "hot-blast" and coking methods to forestall shutdowns but .... it was not enough. The death-knoll had sounded and finally the old stone-stacks were "out-of -blast" and their trades-people departed to richer fields or other tasks.
It is possible for the modern motorist, traveling in eastern United States, to see at a few places adjacent to highways the evidence that this early iron industry once existed. Some of the old furnaces appear yet today in nearly complete architectural magnificence. It is incredible, considering the fact that several are standing intact after the passage of nearly two hundred years, that any original form exists whatsoever. They are truely "monuments" to the early-American craftsman.
For the past seven years, it has been the avocation of my wife and self to visit these old furnace sites. Not only do we visit those close to highways but we also trek to some of the hundred which lie in varying degrees of composition in the hinterlands. Some are much intact, some slid-away to half stature, many are tumbled to rubble, and others are reduced to an almost unrecognizable ruin grown over by vegetation. To date, we have filed photographic and written evidence of our visits to some one hundred seventy locations. In the western Pennsylvania counties, we are aided by a Guidebook sponsored and sold under the auspices of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. We enjoy the hiking and traveling recreation and our involvement with American History.
Editors Note: Dick Chesney is a man with a passion for iron furnaces and a serious and dedicated field historian. From his home base in Coraopolis, Dick and his wife Gerry have traveled far to increase their first-hand knowledge of the early stone blast furnaces.