Cornwall Iron Furnace: Two Centuries of Iron

A few miles east of here stands one of the most remarkable industrial survivors in America, a colonial-era iron furnace that still looks much as it did when it last fired in eighteen eighty-three.

Cornwall Iron Furnace was built in seventeen forty-two by Peter Grubb, who found a rich ore deposit nearby and the forests needed to make charcoal fuel. It grew into a self-sufficient iron plantation: an ironmaster's mansion, workers' housing, and a furnace that produced pig iron, cast goods, and cannons for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

Entrepreneur Robert Coleman had acquired most of it by seventeen ninety-eight and ran it profitably for decades. When it finally closed, the community largely intact. Today Cornwall survives as a National Historic Landmark, the only intact charcoal iron furnace still standing in its original plantation in the Western Hemisphere, an unbroken link to the industry that armed the Revolution.