Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site

Following our early morning visit to Roadside America in Shartlesville Pennsylvania, we were off to the next attraction on my list… It was less than an hour away from Shartlesville, close to the town of Elverson PA in Berks County.

This is the Visitor’s Center for the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, one of the 390 National Park Service’s parks across the country.  I included a close up of the flowers in front of the building just because I liked them.

So what is Hopewell Furnace?  Did you ever wonder where iron products came from before the big iron and steel mills were built in Pittsburg PA, Cleveland OH, Gary IN, Birmingham AL and other locations across the USA?  Hopewell is an example of an American late 1700’s, early 1800s rural “iron plantation”. 

This park covers 848 acres.  With its historic buildings, it illustrates a key business, its related technology and the lifestyle of America as it grew into the industrial powerhouse that it was to become.

This was all new to us…and worth learning about.

At first, furnaces or “iron plantations like Hopewell cast a lot of different useful products including plowshares, pots, sash and scale weights, cannons and shot.  But I chose to photograph these creative artistic items for this post.  When iron stoves grew more common in 1800s homes, Hopewell built its business on these handsome ‘stove plates’ as well as iron pipes.  We’d be happy to have one of these ‘plates’ or an entire Hopewell stove on display in our house!

Hopewell Furnace was founded in 1771 by Mark Bird.  He was the son of William Bird, one of Pennsylvania’s most important ironmasters.  This photo shows the ironmaster’s mansion from a distance.  You can equate this home to a plantation house in the south… 

This large complex was the core of operations at Hopewell.  The building that’s barely visible at the right is the charcoal house.  Via the connecting shed (the bridge), workers called fillers carted iron ore, limestone and charcoal from the charcoal house to the bridge house and then they dumped them into the tunnel head.  The tunnel head fed these key ingredients into the furnace (in the white building/”cast house”), where the iron is actually produced.  Note the tile roof on the cast house, designed to help prevent fires.  

The closest building in this photo is the office store…often referred in song as “the company store”.  It was here that workers purchased necessities from their employer…and those purchases were charged against credit for work.

The second white building in the photo is indeed a barn.  This was after all a plantation of sorts…self-contained in almost every way.  The barn held up to 36 draft animals and a full year’s worth of feed.  There were a lot of wagons that needed to be pulled ‘hither and thon’ in order for the furnace to operate efficiently. 

Laurie and I like animals of all types and the park keeps a small herd of sheep on hand as well was this draft horse.  He didn’t want anything to do with the tourists, but he did get down and roll in the dust…enjoying himself very much!  My photos of him actually rolling were blurred or not centered so I could use them.

FYI…work animals at Hopewell included horses, oxen and mules.  They also raised cows, poultry, sheep, pigs and grew crops included clover, corn and buckwheat.  There also was an apple orchard.

Here’s a closer view of the Ironmaster’s Mansion.  It was built in 3 stages, starting ca. 1770 and it was remodeled several times. 

This is a big house…definitely deserving of the title of mansion.  It has 19 rooms, and like plantations of the south, it was referred to as “the big house”.  I was interested to note that the family of the original Ironmaster, Mark Bird, has apparently done OK over the many years.  In 2006 or 2007, his descendants contributed funds to help repair and maintain the home.

The Ironmaster’s mansion was the headquarters or business center of Hopewell Furnace’s operations.  In addition to being the home of the Ironmaster and his family, the mansion provided overnight accommodations to businessmen who were visiting while negotiating and/or trading with the company.  In addition, furnace workers had their meals here.   

Laurie took this photo of me on the porch of the Ironmaster’s mansion… I guess that I was surveying my vast holdings and burgeoning business!

Mark Bird became decidedly non-business like during the Revolutionary War.  That’s when he produced cannon and shot for the Continental Navy.  The existence of iron furnace operations in the Colonies had not been carefully controlled by the British, a failure that they came to regret. 

On the other hand, Bird was nearly ruined when the US government was unable to pay him for his efforts at the end of the war. (Deficit spending before our independence…some things never change!) A flood greatly damaged his holdings too.  In 1786, Bird tried to sell Hopewell with its 5,000 acres as well as his other furnaces (Birdsboro and Spring).  In the end, he lost everything to creditors and the property changed hands 5 times before 1800.

In the end, Daniel Buckley and his brothers-in-law, Thomas and Mathew Brooke bought the property at auction.  Natural disasters, a recession and legal issues closed the Hopewell furnace from 1808 – 1816.  However, beginning in 1816, Clement Brooke, the resident manager from 1816 – 1831, provided the leadership needed to lead Hopewell to its best years.  Even after the furnace “went out of blast” for the last time in 1883, descendants of the Brooke family used the mansion as a summer home until 1935 when the property was purchased by the US government.   

This is a charcoal wagon at the cooling shed… These wooden wagons brought the hot charcoal from the charcoal hearths to the cooling shed which is right next to the charcoal house.  It was a tricky bit of transportation…with drovers on alert for the possibility that the hot charcoal would catch their wagons on fire.

So one question was where did the charcoal come from?  As I mentioned, Hopewell was pretty much self-sufficient.  Here is some interesting math to consider.  At the height of production, Hopewell furnace produced 720 tons of iron in a year.  In order to produce that much iron, the “plantation” consumed 6,000 cords of wood…with about 4,000 coming from the property.  By way of example, 1 tree measuring 22 diameter at breast height, will yield 1 cord of wood.

Charcoal was produced by creating “charcoal pits”.  Each pit consisted of about 30 cords of wood carefully covered with several inches of soil.  One long pole protruded from the top and several holes were built around the base to allow air into the pit.  The soil trapped the heat and the holes allowed enough air to keep the pit smoldering.  Open flames had to be avoided at all cost or nothing but ash would remain.  Each burn/pin averaged about 2 weeks for each fire…at which time an average yield of 21 bushels of charcoal would result.  

  

It takes between 200 and 250 bushels of charcoal to produce 1 ton of iron!  There were literally hundreds of these charcoal hearths or pits at Hopewell.  Colliers lived in (or existed in) rude huts like this one as the fires had to be tended at all times.  They looked like "Hobbit" houses.

While we didn’t get a usable photo of the furnace itself, Laurie did manage to capture this photo of the 22 foot diameter “breast” wooden waterwheel located at the base of the furnace.  It drove the air blast machinery for the furnace.  Iron production at Hopewell required a blast of air above 2800 degrees Fahrenheit.  The water wheel supplied the power for this air blast by pumping a pair of pistons inside 2 blowing tubs compressing the air before hitting the fire. 

FYI…a 'breast wheel' gets its name from the fact that the water turns the wheel by flowing in halfway up the wheel instead at the top of the wheel.   

This is an interior photo from the blacksmith’s building.  Almost all needed iron tools for the operation were made by the blacksmith.  One other major product of the furnace was pig iron…ingots of iron that were used by blacksmiths and other operations that needed iron to make products for consumers.

The Ironmaster, the founder, blacksmith and his assistants, timber cutters, miners, colliers, teamsters, fillers, keepers, guttermen, molders, cleaners, farm workers and other supporting laborers…they were all part of Hopewell and other operations like it.  This was a truly a self-sufficient village. 

What about the women at Hopewell?  Some of them actually cut timber and mined.  A few worked in the furnace area helping to finish the products.  To learn more about women’s roles on this iron plantation, you can go to https://www.nps.gov/hofu/learn/historyculture/women-working-at-hopewell-furance.htm.

There are several ruins at Hopewell with some buildings being just an outline of their former selves.  The first photo shows the foundations for brick kilns that were intended to replace the inefficient charcoal pits.  They didn’t succeed. 

The second photo shows the ruins of an anthracite furnace…an attempt to upgrade the product and efficiency of iron production.  It failed when it just collapsed. 

In reality, the development of high volume low cost big city steel factories and the evolution of the Bessemer steel production process doomed Hopewell Furnace and similar operations around the country. 

This is a long range view from a bridge about midway on the Hopewell Historic Site.  You can see a blacksmith shop and the primary buildings beyond it.  In addition to what we’ve shown, behind us there is a boarding house, tenant homes, a school house, and a springhouse/smokehouse.  Traces remain of other structures and a existing nearby church served the Hopewell Furnace community.  It is also part of the National Historic Site. 

Despite the fact that hundreds of people (workers and families) had to live at or near Hopewell Furnace in its heyday, I couldn’t discover any population estimates for the operation…

We were both surprised and intrigued by the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site.  It was a true learning experience and we’d recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about early life and business in America.  Check it out at https://www.nps.gov/hofu/index.htm.  FYI, there isn't an entrance fee for this National Historic Site!

This was a little lengthy… With Roadside America, it should have been enough for one day but my bride decided that we should make one more stop before heading for our overnight accommodations in Stroudsburg Pennsylvania.  Her ‘surprise’ destination will be featured in my next post.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a long history and cultural lesson!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave