Crane Iron Works: The Furnace That Proved Anthracite
Near Allentown, Pennsylvania
On July fourth, eighteen forty, a furnace in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania made industrial history. The Lehigh Crane Iron Company's blast furnace, built by Welsh ironmaster David Thomas, became the first long-term commercially successful anthracite iron furnace in the United States. Within weeks of opening it was producing fifty to sixty tons of pig iron per week.
This mattered enormously. Anthracite coal burned hotter and more consistently than charcoal, but ironmakers had long struggled to control the blast needed to keep an anthracite furnace running. Thomas, drawing on his experience in South Wales, solved the problem. His success at Catasauqua opened the floodgates of American iron production, and the Lehigh Valley became the center of the country's iron industry. By eighteen sixty-eight, the Crane works alone had six furnaces. Production continued into the early nineteen twenties, making Catasauqua one of the longest-running anthracite iron operations in American history.
