Elkridge Furnace Complex

In the early seventeen fifties, Caleb Dorsey founded an iron furnace here along the Patapsco River, tapping locally quarried ore and the river's waterpower to produce pig iron. The operation relied on enslaved, indentured, and convict labor in brutal conditions, archaeological excavations have since uncovered the remains of small cabins tied to that forced workforce.

During the Revolution, the furnace reportedly supplied cannons and ammunition to the American cause. The Ellicott family purchased it in eighteen twenty-two. Two major floods, in eighteen sixty-eight and eighteen seventy-three, destroyed the furnace and ended iron production on the site. The surviving buildings are now on the National Register of Historic Places and operate today as the Elkridge Furnace Inn, managed by private curators on land held by Maryland's Department of Natural Resources.