Old iron furnaces in the neighborhood

[Don P]

An interesting read about the history of some local iron furnaces and works I pass by often.
Graham's Iron Forge - Major Graham's Mansion (google.com)

This was this morning's "squirrel"  :D. I was reading the historic nomination papers for the gristmill the Major owned, was looking stuff up and went down another fascinating rabbit hole. 

Sort of related to another thread about running the world on wood. Notice the production of product and the acre/day of forest each of these furnaces burned. By the turn of the century these hills were barren scrub at that meager level of production. The older trees I cut now are the ones that the colliers walked away from when the iron industry collapsed here. Not that long ago really.

[kantuckid]

I just read some about the local ones still standing. Fitchburg Furnace in Estill Co is the more impressive stonework but there are three closer to me and smaller. Seems these nearby ones were the last of the charcoal fired versions as coke had become the main producer of iron & steel and always nearer to the coal mines, unlike ones nearest me that have no coal. 
VA  furnaces predate most KY ones. KY's furnaces were vital to the War of 1812 so kind of old at that. The type of ore here made them remain attractive-maybe labor supply was cheap? 1,000 men worked at Estill Furnace. Hills are shrub covered in old pics. 

[samandothers]

Interesting information, thanks for posting.  As I recall the Tee shirts from Camp Powhatan Scout near Dublin had a furnace on the logo.

[peakbagger]

Katahdin Iron Works up in Maine is pretty impressive

Katahdin Iron Works - A Maine Historical Site (mainerec.com)

[kantuckid]

Back when men were men and boys worked there too. 

 Latest Smithsonian has an article on the ancient copper mines in what's now Israel. Have been called King Solomons mines but that article revolves around that idea, the sites under investigation and what's found and not found- which is an archeologist controversy, and sort of complex. Theologians vs. two or three schools of archeology. They seem to be recognizing that some civilizations are not going to have palaces and big theatres to leave behind but still might have been smart people who did stuff and lived liked nomads do. 
 The basic process is same charcoal, ore, flux as these old iron furnaces except think a pile of stones like a backyard masonry grill or a dug well with stoneworks and some smaller pits like a campfire circle.  

[Ljohnsaw]

Before I started my cabin project, I had free time and used to do a lot of camping around the state.  We went to this one place twice - Limekiln State Park.  Located on the coast (Highway 1) about midway between San Francisco and Los Angles.  All along the coast there are canyons that cut back into the steep mountains that make up a good portion of the coast in that area.  There are spring fed creeks in each valley.  You get these amazing micro climates where it might be 100° up near the top but a chilly 60° down near the shore with dense redwood and ferns.  In these very narrow valleys grow Coastal Redwood, the tallest trees on the planet.  

Back during the gold rush days, they made a discovery of calcium deposits in one of these valleys.  So they built three large kilns to cook it down into lime for making cement.  The remains are still standing.  They burnt up most of the redwoods in doing that, but there are some impressive replacement there now.  What I found very interesting was if they botched the batch (over heated) and made "soft" lime, that was preferred by England for their local use.  So ships that off-loaded goods in S.F. would fill their hulls with this soft lime as ballast for the return voyage back to the U.K., back around the Straights of Magellan.  Seems like quite the perilous journey for some rock!  Its a great place to kick back and unwind.  There is nothing around for miles - you spend your time hiking in the forest or sitting on the beach watching dolphins, sea otters or whales swim by.

We should probably make the journey again this spring before the snow melts and I'm back up working on the hill!

[kantuckid]

Lots of those VA iron works also shipped theirs to king George in UK. 

[Don P]

There are some pictures of the mines up on Iron Mt in this link.
N&W Locations -- Cripple Creek/NC Branch (nwhistory.info)
If you click on the 4th pic and get the large image you can make out the steam shovel fairly well.

The siding from that ore washer is now covering a log barn over in Mule Hell. I was stopped there one day visiting while the Southern States truck was taking the road to unload feed. The farmer showed me the trip hammer from the nearby forge. He had seen it in the creek while fishing, took a tractor down and fished it out and then spent some time asking around till he found out what he had. He also had a pig stamped from the Raven's Cliff Furnace.

[SwampDonkey]

Town of Woodstock nearby used to have iron works. A road near there is Iron Ore Hill. No sign of the past now. The rail road was head quartered there, so better have a means to repair or make parts back in the 1860's. :D  I've seen old pictures from around there, all turned to field back then, now grown up, clearcut again and now 30 year old growth again, what isn't house subdivision.

I found a snippet on wikipedia that suggested they smelted seventy thousand tons of iron ore between its opening in 1848 and its closure in 1884.  Went on to say the quality of iron from the Woodstock mines was world-renowned in its day as being one of the best quality irons available of the time. The success of the Woodstock iron was attributed to the smelting process which allegedly allowed for more carbon to be absorbed into the final product. It was exported to England mostly.

The mines employed roughly seventy five men in the mines and at the furnaces, ten to twelve teams of men and horses were employed hauling ore to the furnaces, using wagons in the summer and sleds in the winter months. The iron works further generated employment by employing over one hundred and fifty men to harvest wood and another sixty teams of horses and men to haul the wood to the charcoal kilns in order to be processed.

One reference is:

Potter R. R., 1983: The Woodstock Iron Works, Carleton County, New Brunswick Bulletin (1974) 76(853): 81-83; New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources.

[kantuckid]

There are some pictures of the mines up on Iron Mt in this link.
N&W Locations -- Cripple Creek/NC Branch (nwhistory.info)
If you click on the 4th pic and get the large image you can make out the steam shovel fairly well.

The siding from that ore washer is now covering a log barn over in Mule Hell. I was stopped there one day visiting while the Southern States truck was taking the road to unload feed. The farmer showed me the trip hammer from the nearby forge. He had seen it in the creek while fishing, took a tractor down and fished it out and then spent some time asking around till he found out what he had. He also had a pig stamped from the Raven's Cliff Furnace.

I've ridden that area on my motorcycle many times. Some of my routes as done up by a rider friend from Marion, VA area for the tourism group: www.ridevirginiamountains.com. These are mostly around 200 mile day trips centered sort of, on Marion, not Wytheville.  Plus we often travel through the area from KY to get down further S. The amazing thing is that the area around Mt Rogers slopes is now so beautiful in spite of the devastation seen in the pics in the Cripple Creek link. 

[Don P]

We tease our friends on that end of the county, that's Canada  :D. They got 10" to our 6" the other day. The history at that end of the county is more sawtimber and narrow gauge. The timber there was harvested and sawn by a big mill in Konnarock around the turn of the century. hang on...
Here we go;
The last scream of the Creeper - Smoky Mountain Living (smliv.com)
If you want a fun photo tour google O Winston Link, I imagine some of his period train photos will pop up, great stuff.

If you ever want a fun bike ride, you can coast down the old railbed from the old Whitetop station, past the Green Cove station and down to Damascus, twenty some miles. You will have to hit the pedals a few strokes right at the end into town.

[kantuckid]

Been there, done that!- on the Virginia Creeper bicycle trail. Even my kindergarten granddaughter did the Damascus upper part, 17 miles-it's all a delightful downhill journey.
Years ago living in Shawnee county KS I had a GF in Seward, NE who went to Concordia teachers College where my buddy went. It would be say 3040 degs in KS then like the artic when I got up into NE. Similar thing happens in KY when you get up very far into OH, can change a bunch, Much weather that Cinn, OH gets we dont get 1.5 hrs below there.  
My wife and I go ride the old Dawkins RR line (RR to bike trail) where she grew up. It runs around 27 miles? from Floyd Co, KY over thru Johnson (her county) into Magoffin Co (well known as Larry Flynt the Hustler guy was from there). Her uncle, now 92, worked there as a college kid job and brakeman. it has some tunnels and lots of bridges and some is very scenic, most all is rural. It's a "linear"state park and all old rail bed, so fairly tame riding. 
In FL we mostly ride bikes every day-I'll put several hundred miles on mine as I ride when my wifes not some. FL has many bike paths, sand and more sand when not paved. 

[Don P]

Oh, the Smithsonian article. My takeaway from that was that for many years, a couple of thousand anyway, people have been describing a great civilization. The archaeologists said "no great ruins, didn't happen". The bright young man at the heart of this story found evidence of considerable work around the mines and realized these were highly skilled and "civilized" people in a society of nomadic tent dwellers. The "ruins" rotted and blew away a thousand years ago. But they were there  ;)


I can look out the back window here and I would be seeing the smoke from 3 of those furnaces. Yet in the scant hundred years since they were under blast I've never seen the waterwheel, air chest or wind belt on an old stone furnace.

[kantuckid]

I've wondered if archeologists, in spite of their training, might often be like educators I've been around and not fully understand human intelligence. Sadly, so many "well educated people" think to be smart means to have sat in classrooms in a classical setting. This was reinforced upon me when I ran a testing center for some years and interpreted scores to people.
 See the Tucker Carlson interview with the CEO of Crash, founder of Praxis, names Issac Morehouse-> for some basic information that makes my point. He's got it figured out and I hope he sells his message. His main message deeply co-incides with all this "pay of my student loan mentality be pushed off on the country now. 
As a real life e.g.-our son that's involved with and CEO of a plastics startup was offered a plant site by a fellow PHd in an area where absolutely nobody would build or allow a plastic plant. 
Personally speaking, I am certain that many educators would think that I got smarter by virtue of sitting for all those what I'll call "chalk talks", which were really hours upon hours of droning on lectures, in a more profound way than my 8,000 hours of real world apprenticeship or military training or being on jobs all day or night. History tells us they were just as smart, yet lacked the technology that happens over time. This thing that the FB guy or BG or the google crowd is the only real smarts in the world has to got to change or we wont have any roads or bridges. I have a cousin in that mold, he got filthy rich by inventing a hard drive, but in many ways he's not as smart as some non techy people. But he got done what he knew well w/o a full measure of what we all call common sense. 
Mike Rowe worked with rodbusters on his new Dirty Jobs series thats come back out. The owner of that company is a HS educated guy with a $17 million annual company do rebar on roads & bridges. 
When one of our sons was in Navy nuclear eng school, I asked him at graduation in Goose Creek, SC how many of his classmates would you go have a beer with and as I recall he said, maybe 35% or so, the rest being deep minded nerds I guess. That same son, design and engineering mgr., says knowing what he knows now, he'd have gone for construction trades supervision in college and not civil engr and made more money and liked it better too. 
Those people that built up all those mines & iron plants in Israel and in VA had to have some serious intelligence.