High Bridge: America's Longest Iron Furnace

High Bridge, sitting on the South Branch of the Raritan River, was home to one of the oldest ironworks in the country. The Union Iron Works was founded here in seventeen forty-two by William Allen and Joseph Turner of Philadelphia. During the Revolution, its furnaces cast cannonballs for George Washington's Continental Army.

In eighteen oh three Robert Taylor bought the works, and his family ran them for five generations. By nineteen twelve it had grown into the Taylor-Wharton Iron and Steel Company, producing railroad frogs, switches, axles, and war material for two World Wars. The company traced an unbroken line of iron production stretching nearly two centuries from this small Hunterdon County valley.